WILLIAM  Ef  ART  GLADSTONE 

life  anb  public  Services 

THE  STATESMAN  INCORRUPTIBLE 

THE  PATRIOT  UNDAUNTED 

THE  REFORMER  UNFLINCHING 


The  Friend  of  All  Humanity,  and  by  All 
Humanity  Beloved. 


"  Statesman,  yet  friend  to  truth." 

—POPE. 


WITH  PLEASANT  RECOLLECTIONS  OF  HAPPY  SERVICE  IN  THE 
RANKS  OF  THE  GREAT  LEADER 

BY 

THOMAS   W.  HANDFORD, 

Author  of  "The  Home  Instructor,"  "Life  of  Beecher,"  "Pleasant  Hours  with 
Illustrious  Men  and  Women,"  "The  Sands  of  Time,"  etc. 


Beautifully  Illustrated  by  many  Full  Page  Half  Tone  Engravings  and  Etchings. 


1898 

THE  DOMINION  COMPANY, 
352-356  Dearborn  St., 

CHICAGO,  U.  S.  A. 


COPYUIGHTED,    1898, 
BY 

InA  P.  ROWLEY. 


PREFACE. 


MANY  writers  have  been  at  work  of  late  compiling  a 
"Life  of  Gladstone."  Some  who  have  never  seen 
his  face  nor  heard  his  voice,  will  seek  to  tell  the 
story  of  his  life  and  record  the  grand  service  he  rendered  his 
country  and  his  age.  Each  author  will  address  his  readers 
from  his  own  particular  standpoint,  and  as  * '  every  eye  sees 
its  own  rainbow,"  so  every  author  will  describe  his  own 
"Gladstone."  It  was  my  privilege  to  be  actively  engaged 
in  that  grand  Campaign  which  ended  in  the  Disestablishment 
and  Disendowrnent  of  the  Irish  Church.  In  this  happy  ser- 
vice I  was  brought  much  in  contact  with  Mr.  Gladstone, 
and  learned  to  regard  him  with  enthusiastic  homage  for  the 
thoroughness  and  dignity  of  his  leadership.  Many  years 
have  passed  since  that  eventful  period.  I  have  been  for 
ten  years  a  citizen  of  the  United  States,  and  I  have  been 
stirred  with  the  ambition  to  tell  my  adopted  fellow-coun- 
trymen what  I  know  of  Gladstone  and  his  brave  high 
service  to  his  country  and  the  world.  While  I  write, 
memory  reverts  to  the  days  when  the  masses  of  England 
were  moving  swiftly  in  the  direction  of  treason  and  anarchy. 
I  remember  unhappy,  discontented  men,  standing  at  church 
doors  on  Sunday  mornings,  exhibiting  loaves  of  bread 
dipped  in  blood,  as  a  token  of  their  feelings  and  a  menace 
of  their  purposes.  I  saw,  when  a  boy,  the  Bible  torn  leaf 
from  leaf  in  the  market  place,  and  God  denounced  as  hav- 
ing "lost  his  thunderbolts  and  forgotten  to  care  for  the 
poor. "  Mr.  Gladstone  was  classed  with  the  ' '  rascally 
tyrants  of  the  aristocracy"  and  openly  jeered  as  "the 


PREFACE. 


puppet  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle."  What  changes  time 
has  wrought  !  The  first  Sabbath  after  the  great  stateman's 
interment  in  Westminster  Abbey,  thousands  of  people 
gathered  around  many  platforms  in  Hyde  Park,  London, 
to  hear  eulogies  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  to  join  in  singing 
"Rock  of  Ages."  And  these  were  the  sons  of  the  men  I 
heard  scoffing  God  half  a  century  ago  and  tearing  the  Bible 
in  scorn.  No  man  did  more  than  Mr.  Gladstone  to  bring 
about  this  happy  change,  to  lead  men  to  a  higher  and  a 
loftier  thought. 

The  compiling  of  these  pages  has  been  the  happy  work  of 
years.  I  have  sought  information  from  many  sources.  I 
owe  more  than  I  can  tell  to  the  labors  of  those  who  have 
gone  before  :  to  G.  Barnett  Smith,  to  Justin  McCarthy, 
to  Mr.  W.  E.  Russell,  to  Mr.  Lucy,  and  to  the  journals  of 
many  years.  I  shall  be  supremely  happy  if  I  can  present 
such  a  portrait  of  Mr.  Gladstone  to  American  readers  as 
will  win  the  homage  his  great  name  deserves.  He  was  an 
Apostle  of  Freedom  :  a  Leader  through  the  darkness,  and 
up  the  heights :  He  was  Incorruptible  as  the  Servant  of 
his  Age  :  His  sympathies  compassed  the  whole  human  race. 

He  wore  the  white  flower  of  a  blameless  life 

through  the  storms  and  sunshine  of  four  score  years  and 
seven.  His  name  deserves  to  be  held  in  everlasting 
remembrance. 

CHICAGO,  June  6,  1898. 


COOTEOTS. 


I.     INTRODUCTORY 7 

II.     BIRTH  AND  BOYHOOD 15 

III.  MEMORIES  OF  EARLY  DAYS 24 

IV.  SCHOOL  DAYS  AT  ETON 29 

V.     STUDENT  LIFE  AT  OXFORD 37 

VI.     MEMBER  OF  PARLIAMENT  FOR  NEWARK 46 

VII.     EARLY  SPEECHES  IN  PARLIAMENT 55 

VIII.     EARLY  SPEECHES  IN  PARLIAMENT — CONTINUED 68 

IX.     THE  YOUNG  MINISTER  OF  STATE 72 

X.    ACCESSION  AND  COHONATION  OF  QUEEN  VICTORIA 79 

XI.     THE  BUSY  PRIVATE  MEMBER < 88 

XII.     THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  CHURCH 96 

XIII.  WEDDING  BELLS  104 

XIV.  AT  WORK  IN  EARNEST:     REPEAL  OF  THE  CORN  LAWS  111 
XV.    THE  BRITISH  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS — A  SKETCH 121 

XVI.     MEMBER  FOR  OXFORD 130 

XVII.    KEJECTED  BY  OXFORD — LIBERAL  LEADER 177 

XVIII.     THE  GREAT  WORK  OF  REFORM 188 

XIX.     HUMORS  OF  THE  OLD  ELECTION  DAYS 199 

XX.     DISESTABLISHMENT  AND  DISENDOWMENTOFTHE  IRISH 

CHURCH 211 

XXI.    YEARS  OF  WONDERFUL  PROGRESS 222 

XXII.     HOME  RULE 252 

XXIII.  THE  MIDLOTHIAN  MANIFESTO 265 

XXIV.  IRELAND: — MR.  GLADSTONE'S  HOME  RULE  BILL 281 

XXV.     THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  GREEKS    300 

XXVI.     THE  GOLDEN  WEDDING  OF  MR.  AND  MRS.  GLADSTONE  315 
XXVII.     GLADSTONE  ON  AMERICA — "OUR  KIN   BEYOND  THE 

SEA" 318 

XXVIII.     GLADSTONE'S  FRIENDS 324 

XXIX.    SUNDAY  AT  HA  WARDEN  CHURCH 334 

XXX.    MR.  GLADSTONE  AT  HOME 341 

XXXI.     MRS.  GLADSTONE 348 

XXXII.     WORDS  OF  WISDOM  SELECTED  FROM  MR.  GLADSTONE'S 

BOOKS  AND  SPEECHES 354 

XXXIII.  WORDS  OF  WISDOM  SELECTED  FROM  MR.  GLADSTONE'S 

BOOKS  AND  SPEECHES — CONTINUED 361 

XXXIV.  AN  AMERICAN  LADY'S  ESTIMATE  OF  GLADSTONE 369 

XXXV.     MISCELLANEOUS  SKETCHES,  ETC 380 

XXXVI.  MR.  GLADSTONE  AS  AN  ORATOR 391 

XXXVII.  T.  P.  O'CONNOR'S  TRIBUTE  TO  GLADSTONE 397 

XXXVIII.  LAST  SCENES 407 

XXXIX.     THE  NATION'S  TRIBUTE  ..  417 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 

1  RIGHT  HON.  W.  E.  GLADSTONE Frontispiece.  LZ1 

2  THOMAS  W.  H ANDFORD 3 

3  BIRTHPLACE  OF  GLADSTONE 16 

4  W.  E.  GLADSTONE,  AETAT  75 20 

5  VICTORIA,  QUEEN  OF  ENGLAND 21 

6  QUEEN  VICTORIA  ON  HER  SEVENTH  BIRTHDAY  28 

7  RIGHT  HON.  BENJAMIN  DISRAELI,  EARL  BEACONSFIELD 29 

8  CHBIST  CHURCH,  OXFORD  38 

9  LORD  ROSEBERRY - 48 

10  LORD  SALISBURY 49 

11  ENTRANCE  TO  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS 50 

12  MR.  GLADSTONE,  M.  P.  FOR  NEWARK,  AETAT  23 52 

13  THE  SPEAKER  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS 54 

14  QUEEN  VICTORIA  OPENING  PARLIAMENT 56 

15  CHAS.  S.  PARNELL 58 

16  JOHN  DILLON,  M.  P 59 

17  SCENE  IN  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS 60 

18  THE  LOBBY  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS 61 

19  MR.  GLADSTONE  DELIVERING  His  MAIDEN  SPEECH 64 

20  HOUSE  OF  PARLIAMENT 72 

21  SIR  ROBERT  PEEL 74 

22  SCENE  IN  THE  HOUSE  OF  LORDS , 78 

23  IN  THE  LOBBY  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  LORDS 84 

24  THE  LORD  CHANCELLOR  ON  THE  WOOLSACK 86 

25  THE  SUNDAY  ORATOR  OF  HYDE  PARK 90 

26  MBS.  GLADSTONE 106 

27  RUINS  OF  THE  OLD  CASTLE,  H AWARDEN 108 

28  ALBERT  EDWARD,  PRINCE  OF  WALES 116 

29  DOWN  WITH  EVERYTHING 117 

30  JUSTIN  MCCARTHY,  M.  P 132 

31  RIGHT  HON.  A.  J.  BALFOUR,  MOVING  THE  HOUSE  FOR  A  PUB- 

LIC FUNERAL  FOB  MR.  GLADSTONE . .  133 

32  THE  SHELDONIAN  THEATRE,  OXFORD .  135 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE. 

33  MB.   GLADSTONE   LECTURING  IN  THE  SHELDONIAN  THEATRE, 

OXFORD 142 

34  RECEIVING  ELECTION  RETURNS  AT  THE  REFORM  CLUB 190 

35  THE  THIRD  PARTY 193 

36  THE  BEWILDERED  VOTER 200 

37  THE  CANDIDATE  AND  THE  COSTERMONGEB 202 

38  HODGE,  THE  YOUNG  AGRICULTURIST 206 

39  THE  DRIVE,  HAWARDEN  211 

40  SACKVILLE  STREET,  DUBLIN  212 

41  PHCENIX  PARK,  DUBLIN 216 

42  LORD  HARTINGTON,  DUKE  OF  DEVONSHIRE 224 

43  CHATSWORTH,  SEAT  OF  THE  DUKE  OF  DEVONSHIRE 230 

44  MR.  GLADSTONE  ADDRESSING  His  CABINET 256 

45  LORD  SALISBURY  ADDRESSING  THE  HOUSE  OF  LORDS 268 

46  MR.  GLADSTONE  IN  MIDLOTHIAN 268 

47  GOVERNMENT  BUILDINGS,  DUBLIN 284 

48  THE  BANK  OF  IRELAND 286 

49  WINDSOR  CASTLE ,  310 

50  RIGHT  HON.  JOHN  BRIGHT,  M.  P . . . . 311 

51  THE  WEDDING  ALBUM 316 

52  THE  WEDDING  ALBUM 317 

53  THE  WEDDING  ALBUM , 318 

54  THE  WEDDING  ALBUM 319 

55  THE  WEDDING  ALBUM 320 

56  THE  WEDDING  ALBUM 321 

57  CARDINAL  NEWMAN 326 

58  CARDINAL  MANNING 327 

59  VIEW  OF  INTERIOR  OF  HAWARDEN  CHURCH 336 

60  INTERIOR  OF  HAWARDEN  CHURCH 338 

61  HAWARDEN  CHURCH 340 

62  THE  CASTLE,  HAWABDEN 342 

63  MR.  GLADSTONE'S  STUDY 348 

64  MRS.  GLADSTONE 352 

65  MR.  GLADSTONE  READING  PRAYERS  IN  HAWARDEN  CHURCH 353 

66  HERBERT  GLADSTONE 362 

67  GRANDPA  GLADSTONE  AND  DOROTHY  DREW 382 

68  FAC-SIMILE  OF  A  POSTAL  CARD 387 

69  MR.  AND  MRS.  GLADSTONE  ON  THEIR  GOLDEN  WEDDING  DAY..  414 

70  MR.   GLADSTONE'S  LAST  PUBLIC  APPEARANCE 415 

71  MRS.  GLADSTONE  LISTENING  TO  THE  SERMON  OF  DEAN  WICKHAM  422 

72  MR.  GLADSTONE'S  GRAVE  .  423 


CHAPTER  I. 


INTRODUCTORY. 

"  Beyond  the  poet's  sweet  dream,  lives 
The  eternal  epic  of  the  man." 

—John  G.  Whittier. 

"  We  live  in  thoughts,  not  breaths  ; 
In  feelings,  not  in  figures  on  a  dial : 
He  lives  the  most  who  loves  the  most, 
Who  thinks  the  noblest,  acts  the  best." 

— Ph.  James  Bailey. 

"  A  dauntless  pioneer  : 

One  of  those  strong-armed  axemen  who  are  born 
The  tangled  paths  of  common  men  to  clear  : 

A  herald  of  that  shining  morn 
When  all  that  clouds  the  human  mind  shall  disappear.." 

— Anonymous. 
• 

To  tell  the  story  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  life  would  require  a 
library  rather  than  a  book  ;  for  in  telling  that  story  with 
any  degree  of  faithfulness,  one  would  have  to  rehearse  the 
salient  events  of  the  nineteenth  century — the  grandest  cen- 
tury of  all  the  years  of  time.  The  years  of  England's 
greatest  commoner  have  run  parallel  with  the  years  of  this 
eventful  period  of  time.  He  saw  the  century  in  its 
infancy,  he  saw  its  hopeful  youth,  he  marked  with  wonder 
its  struggling  manhood,  he  followed  its  career  to  venerable 
age,  and  was  permitted  in  his  own  advanced  years  to  stand 
Avith  calm  and  shining  brow  a  witness  of  the  glory  of  its 
sunset  hours. 


8 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 


Henceforth  Mr.  Gladstone's  name  and  Mr.  Gladstone's 
work  will  form  an  inseparable  part  of  this  golden  age. 

"  For  to  him  who  works,  and  loves  his  work, 
The  golden  age  is  ever  at  his  door." 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  a  mere  spectator  of  affairs  as  these 
great  years  rolled  on.  He  was  privileged  to  have  a  very 
large  share  in  molding  their  destiny.  It  is  no  exaggeration 
to  say,  that  the  England  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  very 
much  what  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  men  of  like  mind,  made  it. 

The  true  wealth  of  a  nation  consists  more  in  its  men  than 
in  any  material  possession.  We  can  weigh  our  corn,  count  our 
cattle,  measure  our  woods  and  forests  and  prairies,  and 
tell  with  reasonable  accuracy  the  area  of  our  inland  seas; 
but  we  have  no  scales  in  which  we  can  weigh  Washington 
and  Whittier  and  Lincoln.  Their  influence  defies  all  limi- 
tations of  time  or  area,  and  mocks  at  our  poor  foolish 
dreams  of  measurement.  Banks  and  mines,  corn  and  cot- 
ton mean  much,  but  Benjamin  Franklin  and  Thomas  Jeffer- 
son, Charles  Sumner  and  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  mean 
more.  The  grandest  crop  a  land  can  yield  is  a  crop  of 
noble,  earnest  men,  "with  empires  in  their  brains,"  and 
faithful  women  with  love's  pure  flame  glowing  in  their  hearts 
and  eternal  patience  in  their  ministering  hands. 

This  wealth  England  has  had  in  rare  degree.  What 
glittering  names  bestud  her  sky!  Shakespeare  and  Milton, 
Bacon  and  Sir -Henry  Vane,  Raleigh  and  George  Herbert, 
Clive  and  Pitt,  Wilberforce  and  Havelock,  Palmerston  and 
Lord  John  Russell,  George  Canning  and  John  Bright. 
Their  name  is  "legion" — thousand-fold. 

But  England  has  not  spoken  a  greater  name  for  a  thou- 
sand years  than  the  name  of  William  Ewart  Gladstone.  He 
proved  himself  to  be  as  devout  as  Thomas  a  Kempis, 
as  patriotic  as  John  Hampden,  as  dauntless  as  Oliver  Crom- 
well and  as  incorruptible  as  Andrew  Marvell.  He  was 
for  the  best  part  of  two  generations  the  object  of  the 


INTRODUCTORY.  9 

almost  idolatrous  homage  of  millions  of  his  fellow  country- 
men, he  won  and  kept,  and  will  retain  for  countless  years 
the  admiration  of  the  world! 

At  best  the  story  told  in  these  pages  will  be  fragmentary 
and  imperfect.  But  we  shall  count  ourselves  most  happy 
if  we  may  present  a  picture  of  Mr.  Gladstone  in  crudest 
outlines,  as  we  have  seen  him  and  known  him  for  many 
happy  years. 

Many  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  ardent  admirers  claim  for  him 
that  he  was  a  man  of  undoubted  genius.  It  would  be 
fruitless  to  enter  into  any  controversy  on  this  matter,  or 
even  to  attempt  any  definition  of  that  very  comprehensive 
term  "genius."  The  brief  analysis  from  the  pen  of  George 
Barnett  Smith  is  much  more  to  the  purpose.  Speaking  of 
the  great  statesman,  he  says  : 

' '  There  has  rarely,  if  ever,  been  witnessed  in  statesmanship 
so  singular  a  combination  of  qualities  and  faculties.  Without 
being  possessed  of  that  highest  of  all  gifts,  an  absolutely 
informing  genius,  he  had,  perhaps,  every  endowment  save 
that.  Liverpool  gave  him  his  financial  talent  and  business 
aptitude,  Eton  his  classical  attainments,  Oxford  his  moral 
fervor  and  religious  spirit.  He  threw  around  the  science 
of  finance  a  halo  with  which  it  seemed  impossible  to  invest 
it,  and  he  diffused  a  light  upon  all  great  questions  in  which 
he  became  interested  which  has  revealed  them  to  and 
brought  them  clearly  within  the  popular  apprehension  and 
understanding. " 

Mr.  Hatton's  estimate  of  Mr.  Gladstone  is  too  just  and 
discriminating  to  be  overlooked  : 

' '  He  cared  even  more  than  trades  unions  for  the  welfare 
of  the  workingmen ;  more  than  the  manufacturers  for  the 
interests  of  capital ;  more  for  the  cause  of  retrenchment  than 
the  most  jealous  and  avowed  foes  of  government  expendi- 
ture ;  more  for  the  spread  of  education  than  the  advocates 
of  a  compulsory  national  system  ;  more  for  careful  consti- 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 


tutional  precedent  than  the  Whigs  ;  and  more  for  the  spir- 
itual independence  of  the  Church  than  the  highest  Tories. 
He  united  cotton  with  culture,  Manchester  with  Oxford,  the 
deep  classical  joy  over  the  Italian  resurrection  and  Greek 
independence  with  the  deep  English  interest  on  the  amount 
of  duty  on  Zante  raisins  and  Italian  rags.  The  great  rail- 
way boards  and  the  bishops  were  about  equally  interested  in 
Mr.  Gladstone.  And  again,  from  the  intellectual  point  of 
view,  Mr.  Gladstone's  mind  mediated  between  the  moral 
and  material  interests  of  the  age,  and  rested  in  neither.  He 
moralized  finance  and  commerce,  and  (if  we  may  be  allowed 
the  barbarism)  institutionalized  ethics  and  faith.  " 

In  addition  to  a  phenomenal  physical  constitution,  nature 
was  lavish  to  Mr.  Gladstone  in  other  ways.  Education, 
association  and  instinct  early  led  him  into  the  political  arena, 
where  he  immediately  made  his  mark.  But  there  are  half 
a  dozen  other  professions  he  might  have  embarked  upon 
with  equal  certainty  of  success.  Had  he  followed  the  line 
one  of  his  brothers  took  he  would  have  become  a  prince 
among  the  merchants  of  Liverpool.  Had  he  taken  to  the 
legal  profession  he  would  have  filled  the  courts  with  his 
fame.  Had  he  entered  the  Church  its  highest  honors  would 
have  been  within  his  grasp.  The  Church  lost  a  great 
bishop,  and  perhaps  archbishop,  when  Mr.  Gladstone  went 
into  politics.  If  the  stage  had  allured  him  the  world 
would  have  been  richer  by  another  great  actor  —  an  oppor- 
tunity some  of  his  critics  say  not  altogether  lost  in  exist- 
ing circumstances.  To  the  personal  gifts  of  a  mobile 
countenance,  a  voice  sonorous  and  flexible,  and  a  fine  pres- 
ence, Mr.  Gladstone  possessed  dramatic  instincts  frequently 
brought  into  play  in  House  of  Commons  debate  or  in  his 
platform  speeches.  It  is  the  fashion  to  deny  him  a  sense 
of  humor,  a  judgment  that  could  be  passed  only  by  a 
superficial  observer.  In  private  conversation  his  marvelous 
memory  gave  forth  from  its  apparently  illimitable  store  an 


INTRODUCTORY.  11. 

appropriate  and  frequently  humorous  illustration  of  the 
current  topic.  If  his  fame  had  not  been  established  on  a 
loftier  line  he  would  be  known  as  one  of  the  most  delightful 
conversationalists  of  the  day. 

In  the  Revieiv  of  fiei'tews,  Mr.  \V.  T.  Stead  in  an 
exhaustive  and  judicious  sketch  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  seeking 
among  other  things  to  account  for  the  great  statesman's 
hold  upon  his  country  and  the  world,  has  this  to  say: 

"The  great  secret  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  hold  upon  the 
nation's  heart  was  the  belief  which  has  become  a  fixed  con- 
viction with  the  masses  of  the  voters  that  he  was  animated 
by  a  supreme  regard  for  the  welfare  of  the  common  people, 
and  an  all-constraining  conviction  of  his  obligation  to  God. 
Mr.  Gladstone  was  far  and  away  the  most  conspicuous 
Christian  of  his  time.  He  would  have  divided  the  honors  with 
Lord  Shaf  tesbury,  Mr.  Spurgeon,  Mr.  Bright  and  Cardinal 
Manning.  Nor  is  there  a  bishop  or  an  archbishop  among 
them  who  can  so  much  as  touch  the  hem  of  his  garment  so 
far  as  the  popular  feeling  goes.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  far 
and  away  the  greatest  pillar  and  prop  of  English  orthodoxy. 
To  the  ordinary  voter  here  and  beyond  the  seas  it  was 
more  important  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  unshaken  in  his 
assent  to  what  he  regarded  as  the  eternal  verities  than  that 
all  the  bishops  in  all  the  churches  should  unhesitatingly 
affirm  their  faith  in  the  creed  of  Athanasius.  He  was  a 
man  whose  intellect  they  respected,  even  if  they  did  not 
understand  it  perfectly.  '  He  was  a  capable  man,  a  prac- 
tical man,  a  ripe  scholar,  and  an  experienced  statesman; 
what  was  good  enough  for  him,  is  good  enough  for  us.' 
so  reasoned  many  men  more  or  less  logically,  and  so  the  ser- 
vices in  Hawarden  Parish  Church,  where  Mr.  Gladstone 
read  the  lessons,  much  more  than  any  cathedral  service, 
came  to  have  a  religious  importance  that  was  felt  through- 
out the  empire. 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"  There  is  something  imposing  and  even  sublime  in  the 
procession  of  years  which  bridge  as  with  arches  the 
abyss  of  past  time,  and  carry  us  back  to  the  days  of  Can- 
ning, and  of  Castlereagh,  of  Napoleon,  and  of  Wellington. 
His  parliamentary  career  extended  over  sixty  years — the 
lifetime  of  two  generations.  He  was  the  custodian  of  all 
the  traditions,  the  hero  of  the  experience  of  successive 
administrations,  from  a  time  dating  back  longer  than  most 
of  his  colleagues  can  remember.  For  nearly  forty  years  he 
had  a  leading  part  in  making  or  unmaking  Cabinets,  he 
served  his  Queen  and  his  country  in  almost  every  capacity 
in  office  and  in  opposition,  and  yet  to  the  end  of  his  vener- 
able years  his  heart  seemed  to  be  as  the  heart  of  a  child. " 

If  Mr.  Gladstone's  early  years  were  sublime  in  their  force 
and  courage,  in  their  dauntless,  indomitable  perseverance, 
his  later  years  were  marked  by  the  confidence  and  hope  that 
made  his  old  age  a  prolonged  Indian  summer  of  grace  and 
beauty. 

As  men  grow  old  they  often  grow  morose  and  despairing. 
All  things  are  out  of  joint ;  the  lights  burn  low,  and  the 
wheels  are  turning  backward.  But  Mr.  Gladstone  was  full 
of  hopeful  enthusiasms.  He  had  great  faith  in  the  future. 
He  refused  to  believe  that  God  had  forgotten  His  world. 

He  had  large  hopes  concerning  the  destiny  of  England. 
He  thought  she  might  possibly  become  less  conspicuous  ; 
that  she  might  not  dictate  the  forms  of  national  greatness 
to  aspiring  nations,  but  he  believed  that  for  many  a  long, 
happy  year  she  would  continue  to  inspire  and  enkindle  the 
true  spirit  of  national  greatness.  It  was  one  of  the  golden 
dreams  of  his  venerable  years  that  the  tender  hand  of 
England  would  yet  heal  the  wounded  heart  of  Ireland. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  hopeful  of  his  country  to  the  last  hour 
of  his  glorious  life.  When  men  foretold  with  solemn  voices 
that  England  was  on  the  decline,  that  her  glory  was  depart- 
ing, that  her  sun  was  setting,  that  venerable  statesman 


INTRODUCTORY.  1 3 

presented  the  aspect  of  one  who  has  taken  a  young  heart 
into  the  autumn  of  his  years.  There  was  a  smile  upon  his 
face  as  men  spoke  of  disaster,  as  though  forsooth  his  listen- 
ing ears  caught  the  strains  of 

"  Music  in  every  bell  that  tolled." 

He  did  not  think  that  the  Thames,  the  Severn  and  the 
Wye  would  blend  their  soft  murmurings  to  a  requiem  ;  he 
rather  heard  in  their  flowing  waters  an  anthem  of  lofty 
hope.  He  repelled  the  thought  that  the  Malvern  hills,  the 
Langdale  pikes,  and  the  grand  old  Welsh  mountains  were 
ever  to  stand  as  mute  mourners  of  a  dying  empire  ;  they 
seemed  to  him  more  like  majestic  sentinels  on  guard,  keeping 
vigil  for  future  greatness. 

Among  some  of  his  latest  utterances  are  these  fine  loyal 
words  :  "But  I  fully  recognize  that  we  have  a  great  mission. 
The  work  of  England  has  been  great  in  the  past,  but  it  will 
be  still  greater  in  the  future.  This  is  true,  I  believe,  in  its 
broadest  sense  of  the  English-speaking  world.  I  believe  it 
is  .also  true  of  England  herself.  I  think  that  the  part  which 
England  has  to  play,  and  the  influence  of  England  in  the 
world  will  be  even  vaster  in  the  future  than  it  is  to-day. 
England  will  be  greater  than  she  has  ever  been. " 

"  The  old  nursing1  mother's  not  hoary  yet ; 

There  is  sap  in  her  Saxon  tree. 
Lo  !  she  lifteth  a  bosom  of  glory  yet, 

Through  her  mists  to  the  sun  and  the  sea. 

She  sits  in  her  island  home, 

Peerless  among-  her  peers  ; 
And  Liberty  oft  to  her  arms  doth  come, 

To  ease  its  sad  heart  of  tears. 

Old  England  still  throbs  with  a  muffled  fire 

Of  a  past  she  can  never  forget, 
And  still  shall  she  banner  the  world  up  higher, 

For  there's  life  in  the  old  land  yet." 


|j.  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

But,  if  Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  lover  of  his  country,  not  less 
was  he  a  lover  of  his  kind.  If  he  was  a  man  of  massive 
intellect,  he  was  not  less  a  man  of  capacious  heart,  the  sym- 
pathies of  which  went  out  in  brotherly  regard  to  all  man- 
kind. We  shall  have  occasion  to  refer  later  to  his  delight- 
ful essay  on  "Our  Kin  Beyond  the  Sea,"  in  which  he  man- 
ifested such  a  keen  appreciation  of  all  that  seemed  to  him 
to  be  noble  and  full  of  promise  in  our  own  land.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone understood  America  much  better  than  many  Ameri- 
cans, and  while  we  can  not  help  admiring  the  fervency  of 
his  love  for  England,  neither  can  we  overlook  the  broad, 
magnanimous  view  he  always  entertained  and  generously 
expressed  concerning  America.  He  said: 

"The  England  and  America  of  the  present  are  probably 
the  two  strongest  nations  of  the  world.  But  there  can 
hardly  be  any  doubt  as  between  the  America  and  the  Eng- 
land of  the  future,  that  the  daughter,  at  some  no  very  dis- 
tant time,  will,  whether  fairer  or  less  fair,  be  unquestion- 
ably yet  stronger  than  the  mother. " 

But  Mr.  Gladstone's  sympathies  were  world  wide.  There 
was  room  and  to  spare  in  his  great  heart  for  Neapolitan 
prisoners  and  suffering  Irishmen,  for  outraged  Bulgarians 
and  Armenians,  and  for  the  valiant  sons  of  modern  Greece. 
His  largest  desire,  his  most  cherished  dream  was  to  see  all 
nations  clasped  in  the  golden  girdle  of  universal  peace.  He 
had  come  to  regard  war  as  both  clumsy  and  cruel,  as  much 
a  blunder  as  a  crime.  He  was  a  fervent  advocate  of  arbi- 
tration. His  aged  eyes  longed  for  the  rosy  dawn  of  that 
glad  day  when  the  sword  shall  seek  its  scabbard,  there  to 
rust. 


CHAPTER  II. 

BIRTH    AND    BOYHOOD. 

All !   Happy  years  !     Once  more,  who  would  not  be  a  boy  ?  " 

— Lord  Byron. 

'  The  childhood  shows  the  man, 
As  morning  shows  the  day." 

— John  Milton. 

"  Who  can  foretell  for  what  high  cause 
This  darling  of  the  gods  was  born  ? '' 

— Andrew  Marvell. 

' '  The  earlier  years  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  life  belong  to  a 
period  when  Great  Britain  was  struggling  with  the  results 
of  the  great  revolution  in  France.  The  first  Napoleon  had 
risen  to  power  as  the  embodiment  of  the  idea  of  liberty, 
equality  and  fraternity,  aided  by  his  splendid  military 
genius  and  his  immense  capacities  as  a  ruler.  As  is  com- 
mon in  all  such  cases,  the  citizen  Bonaparte  became  dazzled 
with  the  possibilities  of  his  position,  and  was  silly  enough 
to  prostitute  the  powers  entrusted  to  his  charge  to  further 
his  own  personal  aggrandizement.  The  punishment  came 
at  Waterloo  and  St.  Helena.  Our  own  country  had  also  to 
pay  the  penalty  in  death,  misery  and  want.  The  jails  were 
filled  with  criminals,  the  outcome  of  the  social  conditions ; 
the  press-gang  was  in  constant  w^ork,  and  the  general 
state  of  life  may  be  aptly  described  by  one  fact :  black 
bread  was  the  ordinary  food  of  large  masses  of  the  people, 
and  the  four-pound  loaf  cost  thirty-six  cents.  It  will  be 
readily  understood  how  a  policy  which  had  produced  such 
results  should  in  the  minds  of  many  need  a  great  change. 
That  change  and  its  results  are  in  existence  in  England 


16  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

to-day.  The  subtle  teaching  of  facts  permeated  the  home 
at  Rodney  street,  and  left  its  impress  on  one  who  was  after- 
ward to  become  Prime  Minister. 

"  William  Ewart  Gladstone  was  born  at  his  father's  house, 
62  Rodney  street,  Liverpool,  December  29,  1809.  He  was 
the  third  son,  and  early  gave  promise  of  considerable  mental 
power.  The  home  surroundings  were  well  calculated  to 
develop  all  the  intellectual  qualities.  It  was  the  habit  of 


HOUSE   IN  WHICH   HE   WAS  BORN. 


Mr.  John  Gladstone  to  discuss  all  manner  of  questions  with 
his  children  ;  nothing  was  taken  for  granted  between  him 
and  his  sons.  A  succession  of  arguments  on  great  topics 
and  small  topics  alike — arguments  conducted  with  the  most 
perfect  good  humor,  but  also  with  the  most  implacable 
logic — formed  the  staple  of  the  family  conversation.  Such 
conditions  were  pre-eminently  calculated  to  mould  the 


BIRTH    AND    BOYHOOD.  17 

thoughts  and  direct  the  course  of  an  intelligent  and  recep- 
tive nature.  There  was  the  father's  masterful  will  and 
keen  perception,  the  sweetness  and  piety  of  the  mother, 
wealth  with  all  its  substantial  advantages  and  few  of  its 
mischiefs,  a  strong. sense  of  the  value  of  money,  a  rigid 
avoidance  of  extravagance  and  excess,  everywhere  strenu- 
ous purpose  in  life,  constant  employment  and  concentrated 
ambition. 

"In  William  Ewart  Gladstone  we  have  the  same  restless 
energy,  the  same  sympathy  with  struggling  nationalities, 
the  same  business  aptitude,  the  same  appreciation  of  great 
men,  the  same  far-sightedness,  and  also  the  same  longevity. 
The  great  qualities  of  the  father  have  been  modified  by 
surrounding  circumstances,  but  the  generic  similarity  is 
conspicuous.  It  was  amid  surroundings  such  as  we  have 
indicated  that  W.  E.  Gladstone  began  life.  The  father's 
active  participation  in  parliamentary  contests  opened  wide 
the  door  for  the  buzz  of  political  questions  at  his  house.  It 
also  created  the  conditions  for  the  familiar  association  and 
intercourse  with  men  of  high  quality  and  large  caliber.  It 
is  easy  to  understand  how  the  teaching  and  influence  of  a 
man  of  genius  like  George  Canning  should  remain  a  per- 
manent factor  in  the  intellectual  development  of  a  young 
lad.  It  became  then,  as  it  has  remained  since,  an  important 
influence  in  the  evolution  of  a  great  career." 

Speaking  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  ancestors,  who  were  entirely 
Scotch,  being  proprietors  of  a  moderate  property  near  the 
town  of  Biggar,  in  Lanarkshire,  Mr.  George  W.  E.  Rus- 
sell says  :  ' '  The  title  of  the  estate  from  which  they  took 
their  name  was  Gledstane,  afterward  modernized  to  Glad- 
stone. This  patrimony  dates  back  some  six  hundred  years, 
but  during  the  last  century  or  two  the  family  history  runs 
on  different  lines.  The  grandfather  of  William  Ewart 
Gladstone  was  a  corn  merchant  at  Leith,  and  in  the  course 
of  his  business  had  a  shipload  of  corn  consigned  to  him.  The 


18 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 


vessel  conveying  the  grain  arrived  in  due  course  at  Liver- 
pool, and  his  eldest  son,  John,  was  dispatched  to  that  town 
to  carry  out  the  sale.  The  skill  and  aptitude  exhibited  by 
the  young  Scotchman  in  carrying  through  the  business 
attracted  the  attention  of  one  of  the  leading  corn  merchants, 
on  whose  advice  he  settled  there.  He  commenced  his  busi- 
ness career  as  a  clerk  in  his  friend  and  patron's  house,  and 
lived  to  become  a  principal  partner  in  the  firm,  and  one  of 
the  leading  merchants  of  Liverpool.  His  career  was  suc- 
cessful throughout ;  he  was  at  once  a  keen  and  active  poli- 
tician, a  generous  philanthropist,  and  a  splendid  man  of 
business.  He  was  always  in  earnest,  and  had  built  up  his 
position  in  life  by  shrewd  sense,  great  activity  and  unsul- 
lied honor.  These  great  qualities,  combined  with  a  restless 
energy,  naturally  brought  him  to  the  front  in  all  matters 
connected  with  the  town  of  Liverpool.  In  politics  he  was 
to  all  intents  and  purposes  a  Liberal-Conservative  of  those 
days.  In  1812  he  presided  over  a  meeting  called  for  the 
purpose  of  inviting  Canning  to  become  a  candidate  for  the 
borough.  The  contest  which  ensued  laid  the  foundation  of 
a  life-long  friendship  between  John  Gladstone  and  George 
Canning.  The  influence  of  his  great  friend  converted  Mr. 
Gladstone  to  Conservative  principles,  and  in  1819  he  entered 
the  House  of  Commons,  representing  in  succession  Lancas- 
ter, Woodstock  and  Berwick.  Mr.  John  Gladstone  was,  by 
Sir  Robert  Peel,  created  a  baronet  in  1845,  and  died  in  1851 
at  the  ripe  age  of  eighty-eight. 

The  England  on  which  Mr.  Gladstone  opened  his  eyes  had 
made  very  little  material  progress  since  the  days  of  Queen  Eliz- 
abeth. Travel  and  means  of  transportation  were  at  the  tedious 
rate  common  to  the  days  of  the  Patriarch  Job,  when  "the 
camel  was  for  safety  and  the  horse  for  speed."  There  were 
ilfa8t  stage  coaches,"  as  men  then  counted  fastness.  But 
the  omnipotence  of  the  monarch  we  call  "Steam"  was  only 
" a  dream  of  hair-brained  fanatics."  It  was  nevertheless 


BIRTH    AND    BOYHOOD.-  19 

a  dream  destined  to  become  wonderfully  true.  There  was  no 
system  of  public  government  education;  but  the  rate-payers 
were  compelled  to  support  paupers.  Almost  everything 
was  taxed  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  There  were  church 
taxes,  window  taxes,  cart-wheel  taxes,  horse  taxes,  taxes  on 
malt,  taxes  on  hair-powder  and  taxes  on  silver  plate.  More 
than  seventeen  hundred  articles  were  subject  to  taxation. 
There  were  taxes  on  the  ribbon  of  the  bride,  and  on  the 
brass  nails  of  the  coffin.  The  man  who  indulged  in 
horse  riding  in.  those  days  had  to  ride  a  taxed  horse  with  a 
taxed  bridle  along  a  taxed  road.  It  was  a  land  of  beauti- 
ful liberty  and  abounding  taxation.  And,  as  Sydney  Smith 
said,  the  great  hope  of  the  Englishman  was  that  when  at 
last  life's  pilgrimage  was  ended  he  would  "be  gathered  to 
his  fathers,  and  enter  a  land  of  rest  and  peace  where  he 
would  be  taxed  no  more." 

But  England  was  nursing  noble  souls  when  this  century 
was  young.  The  temple  of  literature  was  thronged  with 
such  men  as  Scott  and  Byron,  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge, 
Southey  and  Shelley  and  Keats,  Campbell  and  Lamb ;  and 
by  the  sluggish  tides  of  the  Mersey  a  cradle  was  being 
rocked  in  which  lay  a  smiling  boy  destined  to  be  the  glory 
of  his  country,  the  honor  of  his  age. 

It  is  not  mere  idle  curiosity  that  longs  to  know  all 
that  can  be  told  of  the  early  days  of  illustrious  men. 

By  a  most  happy  accident  we  have  fallen  upon  some  very 
pleasant  reminiscences  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  boyhood  days  by 
one  of  the  very  few  surviving  comrades  of  those  far  away 
years.  Mr.  Graham  and  Mr.  Gladstone  were  boys 
together. 

The  great  Commoner  of  England  outlived  most  of  his  con- 
temporaries. Those  men  who  were  privileged  to  listen  to 
his  first  parliamentary  utterances  are  now  few  and  far  be- 
tween. The  companions  of  his  boyhood,  even  of  his  ripen- 
ing manhood,  have  practically  disappeared.  How  very  few 


20  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

are  left  who  can  say  "I  remember  Gladstone  as  a  lad" — 
fewer  still,  "I  remember  Gladstone  as  a  boy!  " 

But  Dingwall,  that  far  northern  royal  burgh,  famous  as 
being  the  place  which  Mr.  Gladstone's  mother  claimed  as 
being  "her  town,"  and  over  which,  in  matters  municipal, 
Mr.  Robertson  (Mr.  Gladstone's  grandfather)  presided, 
lays  claim  to  possessing  among  its  townsmen  one  who,  as  a 
boy,  romped  with  Mr.  Gladstone,  took  part  in  his  boyish 
games,  and  discussed  with  him  the  problems  of  child's 
imagination.  If  England  has  in  Mr.  Gladstone  a  "Grand 
Old  Man,"  Dingwall  has  a  "Grand  Old  Man"  in  Mr.  Gra- 
ham. That  venerable  and  worthy  gentleman  for  a  long 
period  of  years  acted  as  local  poor  inspector,  and,  though 
past  eighty,  he  is  still  possessed  of  powers,  mental  and 
physical,  that  are  the  envy  of  many  men  not  more  than 
half  his  age.  Mr.  Graham's  likeness  to  Mr.  Gladstone  is 

c5 

remarkable. 

"Excuse  me,  sir,"  said  a  friend  to  him,  "but  how  like 
Mr.  Gladstone  you  are! " 

Mr.  Graham,  with  an  ever-ready  laugh,  retorted  that,  not 
only  was  he  like  Mr.  Gladstone,  but  he  had  the  pleasure  of 
knowing  him  as  a  boy. 

"I  visited  Mr.  Graham  the  other  evening, "  says  a  recent 
•writer,  '  'and  on  glancing  around  the  snug  room  in  which  we 
sat  together  I  noted  no  fewer  than  four  portraits  of  Mr. 
Gladstone  laid  open  to  view.  One  represented  him  at  the 
age  of  three  score  and  ten;  another  when  he  had,  as  Mr. 
Graham  aptly  put  it,  'crossed  the  line,'  (that  is  eighty 
years) ;  another  represents  him  as  taken  quite  recently  along 
with  Mrs.  Gladstone;  and  in  a  fourth  he  stands  before  a 
Midlothian  audience  in  his  recent  campaign,  exhorting  them, 
in  one  of  his  most  fervid  perorations,  'not  to  put  their 
'  trust  in  squires,  in  parsons,  nor  in  acres,  but  to  listen  to  the 
voice  of  the  people's  will,  and  stand  by  Ireland  in  her 
attempt  to  realize  her  aspirations.'" 


W.  E.  GLADSTONE   ^ETAT  75. 


VICTORIA,  QUEEN  OF  ENGLAND. 


BIRTH    AND    BOYHOOD.  21 

Filled  even  now  with  boyish  life  and  vitality,  and  pos- 
sessing a  memory  and  imagination  as  fresh  and  keen  as  ever 
he  has  known  them  to  be,  Mr.  Graham  plunged  into  many 
interesting  reminiscences  of  his  early  youth.  His  quick 
eye  caught  sight  of  the  large  portrait  of  Mr.  Gladstone  that 
lay  beside  us  near  the  window. 

A  glimpse  at  the  familiar  face  of  the  venerable  statesman 
served  to  put  his  memory  on  the  proper  rails,  and  the  old 
gentleman,  rising  from  his  seat  and  pointing  at  the  portrait, 
said  :  ' '  Isn't  that  like  him  ?  But,  oh,  he  is  changed  since 
I  knew  him  first !  You  need  not  look  surprised,  for  I  knew 
Mr.  Gladstone  seventy  years  since.  We  were  playmates 
here  in  Dingwall  together,  and  many  a  happy  day  have  we 
spent  in  each  other's  company." 

And,  so  saying,  Mr.  Graham  shot  his  memory  back  over 
the  long  vista  of  seven  decades  and  gave  me  his  impressions 
of  Mr.  Gladstone  as  a  boy.  Mr.  Graham  was  a  special 
favorite  with  Mr.  Gladstone's  mother.  During  the  summer 
vacation  she  used  to  bring  her  boys  to  Dingwall  on  a  visit 
to  their  relatives  and  friends  there,  and  on  such  occasions 
she  invariably  sent  for  "the  little  boy  Graham"  to  keep 
the  youngsters  company. 

' '  Willie  was  always  my  favorite, "  said  he,  < '  and,  though 
he  was  a  couple  of  years  older  than  I  was,  we  were  close 
companions  during  those  long  and  happy  summer  days.  We 
would  scamper  along  the  country  roads  together,  both  of  us 
nimbler  in  the  feet  than  we  now  are,  I  warrant ;  we  would 
explore  the  woods  together,  go  in  together  for  all  forms  of 
sport  and  frolic,  and  often  even  take  our  meals  together. " 

"And,  Mr.  Graham,"  I  asked,  "  was  there  anything  about 
the  boy  that  was  remarkable — was  the  child,  so  to  speak, 
father  to  the  man  ? "  Mr.  Graham  replied  that,  even  to  his 
child  mind,  there  did  always  seem  a  charm  about  the  boy 
Gladstone.  His  mind  was  as  alert  as  his  body,  and  he  never 
lost  a  chance  to  extract  information  from  things  the  most 


"Kl  LIFE   OF   GLADSTONE. 

•commonplace.  "He  was  so  inquisitive,"  remarked  the  old 
gentleman,  laughingly,  "he  was  never  content  with  a  simple 
answer  to  a  question,  but  probed  everything  to  the  very 
bottom  ere  he  appeared  anything  like  satisfied."  From 
what  Mr.  Graham  said,  it  appears  that  Willie  Gladstone 
delighted  to  tear  all  sorts  of  subjects  to  shreds,  and  then, 
microscopically,  to  examine  each  shred  separately,  as  he 
plied  questions  with  the  view  of  eliciting  answers. 

"I  remember,"  said  Mr.  Graham,  "we  were  one  day 
standing  together  watching  the  operation  of  potato  plant- 
ing, and  we  fell  on  discussing  the  proper  distance  that  should 
be  given  between  the  plants.  We  argued  the  subject  out  to 
our  own  satisfaction,  and  when  he  had  pumped  ail  the  infor- 
mation possible  on  the  point  from  me,  I  was  highly  amused 
to  see  him  take  from  his  pocket  a  memorandum  book,  in 
which  he  took  a  note  of  all  the  information  he  had  gained 
on  the  subject.  This  note  book  he  called  into  requisition 
very  often,  jotting  down  scraps  of  information  gained  from 
day  to  day,  and  making  memoranda  of  the  most  common- 
place subjects. " 

"And  what  kind  of  a  companion  did  young  Gladstone 
make  ? "  I  asked. 

"He  was  always  lively,"  replied  Mr.  Graham,  "always 
thirsting  after  instruction,  and  delighted  in  prying  into  the 
root  of  things.  But  he  was  not  so  eager  for  fun  and  trick- 
ery as  I  was,  but  would  often  be  thoughtful.  And  nothing 
pleased  him  more  than  reading.  He  would  go  and  buy  a 
treatise  or  tract  on  some  special  subject,  and  pore  over  it, 
mastering  its  contents.  He  was  a  queer  fellow  that  way," 
added  the  old  gentleman,  laughing. 

Then  came  the  rehearsal  of  an  interesting  incident  of  their 
Sunday-school  experiences,  in  Avhich  young  Graham,  on  one 
occasion  at  least,  proved  "too  many"  for  young  Gladstone. 
The  task  submitted  to  the  scholars  was  the  formidable  one 
of  repeating  from  beginning  to  end  the  119th  Psalm,  and 


BIRTH    AND    BOYHOOD.  23 

Mr.  Graham  still  distinctly  remembers  the  keen  interest 
taken  in  the  feat  by  Mrs.  Gladstone,  whose  memory  he 
cherishes.  It  is  no  mean  tribute  to  his  powers  of  memory 
as  a  child  that  he  was  the  only  scholar  who  succeeded  in 
performing  the  task  successfully.  "That  was  no  little 
thing  for  a  wee  boy  to  do,  was  it? "  laughed  Mr.  Graham. 
At  least  I  can  say  that  I  did  what  even  a  Gladstone  failed 
to  do,  .and  what  I  would  certainly  fail  to  do  now,  I  fear. " 
Mr.  Graham  mentioned  a  circumstance  in  connection  with 
Mr.  Gladstone  in  those  days  which,  however  trivial  it  may 
have  seemed  at  the  time,  was,  in  the  light  of  subsequent 
history,  prophetic.  Just  as  Mr.  Gladstone  knows  now  how 
to  take  care  of  our  national  finance,  and  how  to  put  our 
resources  to  the  best  advantage,  he  seemed,  even  as  a  boy, 
to  be  entrusted  by  his  mother,  to  some  extent,  with  the 
household  purse.  Said  Mr.  Graham,  "Mrs.  Gladstone 
used  to  say  laughingly,  'Go  to  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  [meaning  her  son  William],  and  tell  him  to  give 
me  some  money. ' ' 


CHAPTER  III. 

MEMORIES   OF    EARLY    DAYS. 

O.  years,  gone  down  into  the  past, 
What  pleasant  memories  come  to  me. 

— Phoebe  Cary. 

Strange  to  me  are  the  forms  I  meet, 
When  I  visit  the  dear  old  town, 
But  the  native  air  is  pure  and  sweet 
And  the  trees  that  o'ershadow  each  well-known  street, 
As  they  balance  up  and  down, 
Are  singing  the  beautiful  song : 
'  "  A  boy's  will  is  the  wind's  will, 

And  the  thoughts  of  youth  are  long." 

— H.  W.  Longfellow. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  possessed  of  a  most  wonderful  mem- 
ory. It  was  perfectly  phenomenal  in  its  scope  and  reten- 
tiveness.  It  served  the  great  statesman  and  scholar  as  a 
sacred  treasure  house,  to  which  he  has  committed  ten  thou- 
sand facts  in  compact  and  orderly  arrangement.  It  is  said 
of  Mr.  Gladstone  that  "he  never  forgets."  After  he  had 
reached  his  eighty-fourth  year,  he,  at  the  wish  of  some 
friends,  began  recalling  the  memory  of  early  days.  He 
went  back  to  the  days  of  his  boyhood  and  bid  the  dead  past 
reappear.  So  pleasant  and  interesting  are  these  reminis- 
cences that  we  can  not  resist  the  temptation  of  presenting  a 
few  of  them  here,  seeing  that  they  refer  to  events  and 
impressions  of  his  very  early  years. 

Mr.  Gladstone  called  to  mind  the  grand  old  coaching  days, 
when  the  Tony  Wellers  of  the  time  were  men  of  very  con- 
siderable importance.  "The  system  was  raised,"  he  said, 
1  *  to  the  highest  degree  of  perfection,  far  exceeding  that  of 
anything  of  the  kind  to  be  met  with  on  the  Continent." 

24 


MEMORIES    OF    EARLY  DAYS.  25 

When  a  boy,  going  to  school  at  Eton,  between  the  years 
1820  and  1830,  he  went  from  Liverpool  to  Eton  by  coach. 
The  coach  changed  at  Birmingham.  He  gives  this  graphic 
description  of  the  scene,  after  the  lapse  of  three  score  years 
and  ten  :  ' '  Our  coach  used  to  arrive  at  Birmingham  about 
3  or  4  o'clock  in  the  morning,  when  we  were  turned  out  into 
the  street  till  it  might  please  a  new  coach  with  a  new 
equipment  to  •  appear.  There  was  no  building  in  the  town, 
great  or  small,  public  or  private,  at  that  period,  upon 
which  it  was  possible  for  a  rational  being  to  fix  his  eye  with 
any  degree  of  satisfaction."  Mr.  Gladstone  lived  to  see 
this  same  Birmingham  one  of  the  most  beautiful  cities  upon 
the  face  of  the  earth.  He  remembered  Edinburgh  in  the 
days  of  Lord  Moncrieff,  of  Dr.  Gordon,  of  Dr.  Thomson 
and  Bishop  Sandf  ord. 

He  speaks  in  these  early  reminiscences  pleasantly  and 
gratefully  of  some  weeks  spent  in  Edinburgh  and  the  neigh- 
borhood with  that  prince  of  Scottish  preachers  Dr.  Chal- 
mers, whose  wonderful  "Astronomical  Discourses" 
marked  him  out  as  one  of  the  greatest  intellectual  giants  the 
pulpit  of  Scotland  had  seen  since  the  days  of  the  immortal 
John  Knox. 

Speaking  at  a  great  meeting  in  Dundee  in  1890,  Mr. 
Gladstone  gave  some  interesting  memoirs  of  the  condition 
of  commerce  in  his  boyhood.  This  memory  serves  to  indi- 
cate how  strongly  the  love  of  the  beautiful  had  possession 
of  him  in  his  early  youth  : 

"It  is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say,"  Mr.  Gladstone 
observed,  ' '  that  at  the  time  when  I  was  a  youth  of  ten  or 
fifteen  years  of  age  there  was  hardly  anything  that  was 
beautiful  produced  in  this  country.  I  remember  at  a 
period  of  my  life,  when  I  was  about  eighteen,  I  was  taken 
over  to  see  a  silk  factory  in  Macclesfield.  At  that  time  Mr. 
Hnskisson,  whose  name  ought  always  to  be  remembered 
with  respect  among  all  sound  economists,  and  the  govern- 


26  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

ment  of  Lord  Liverpool  had  been  making  the  first  efforts, 
not  to  break  down — that  was  reserved  for  their  happier 
followers — but  to  lessen,  to  modify,  or  perhaps  I  should  say, 
to  mitigate,  a  little  if  possible,  the  protective  system.  Down 
to  the  period  of  Mr.  Huskisson  silk  handkerchiefs  from 
France  were  prohibited.  They  were  largely  smuggled,  and 
no  gentleman  went  over  to  Paris,  without,  if  he  could  man- 
age it,  bringing  back  in  his  pockets,  his  purse,  his  port- 
manteau, his  hat  or  his  great-coat,  handkerchiefs  and  gloves. 
But  Mr.  Huskisson  carried  a  law  in  which,  in  lieu  of  this 
prohibition  of  these  French  articles,  a  duty  of  30  per  cent, 
was  imposed  on  them,  and  it  is  in  my  recollection  that  there 
was  a  keener  detestation  of  Mr.  Huskisson,  and  a  more 
violent  passion  roused  against  him  in  consequence  of  that 
mild,  initial  measure  than  ever  was  associated  in  the  other 
camp,  in  the  protectionist  camp,  within  the  career  of  Cob- 
den  and  Bright.  I  was  taken  to  this  manufactory,  and  they 
produced  the  English  silk  handkerchief  they  were  in  the 
habit  of  making,  and  which  they  thought  it  cruel  to  be 
competed  with  by  the  silk  handkerchiefs  of  France,  although 
even  before  they  were  allowed  to  compete  the  French  man- 
ufacturer had  to  pay  the  fine  of  30  per  cent,  on  the  value. 
It  was  in  that  first  visit  to  a  manufactory  at  Macclesfield 
that — I  will  not  say  I  became  a  free  trader,  for  it  was  ten 
or  fifteen  years  later  when  I  entered  into  the  full  faith  of 
that  policy — but  from  what  I  saw  then  there  dawned  on  my 
mind  the  first  ray  of  light.  What  I  thought  when  they 
showed  me  these  handkerchiefs  was  :  How  detestable  they 
really  are,  and  what  in  the  world  can  be  the  object  of  coax- 
ing, nursing,  coddling  up  manufacturers  to  produce  goods 
such  as  those,  which  you  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  exhib- 
iting." 

It  will  interest  many  readers  who  are  personally  familiar 
with  North  Wales,  who  have  seen  the  sun  rise  over  Snow- 
den's  crest  and  Conway's  castled  towers,  and  who  have  spent 


MEMORIES    OF   EARLY  DAYS.  '21 

many  happy  hours  at  those  grand  ' '  watering  places, "  Rhyl, 
Llandudno,  Bangor  and  Canarvon,  which  we  should  desig- 
nate "Summer  Resorts,"  to  hear  Mr.  Gladstone  tell  of 
traveling  along  the  Xorth  Wales  coast  as  far  as  Bangor  and 
Carnarvon,  when  there  was  no  such  thing  as  a  watering 
place,  no  such  thing  as  a  house  to  be  hired  for  the  purpose 
of  those  visits  that  are  now  paid  by  thousands  of  people  to 
such  multitudes  of  points  all  along  the  coast.  It  was  sup- 
posed that  if  ever  any  body  of  gentlemen  could  be  found 
sufficiently  energetic  to  make  a  railway  to  Holyhead,  that 
railway  could  not  possibly  pierce  the  country,  and  must  be 
made  along  the  coast,  and,  if  carried  along  the  coast,  could 
not  possibly  be  made  to  pay.  So  firm  was  that  conviction 
that  "  I  well  recollect  the  day, "  Mr.  Gladstone,  added  "when 
a  large  and  important  deputation  of  railway  leaders  went  to 
London  and  waited  upon  Sir  Robert  Peel,  who  was  then 
Prime  Minister,  in  order  to  demonstrate  to  him  that  it  was 
totally  impossible  for  them  to  construct  a  paying  line,  and 
therefore  to  impress  upon  his  mind  the  necessity  of  his  agree- 
ing to  give  them  a  considerable  grant  out  of  the  consoli- 
dated fund.  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  a  very  circumspect  states- 
man, and  not  least  so  in  those  matters  in  which  the  public 
purse  was  concerned.  He  encouraged  them  to  take  a  more 
sanguine  view.  Whether  he  persuaded  them  into  a  more 
sanguine  tone  of  mind  I  do  not  know.  This  I  know,  the 
railway  was  made,  and  we  now  understand  that  this  humble 
railway,  this  impossible  railway,  as  it  was  then  conceived, 
is  at  the  present  moment  the  most  productive  and  remuner- 
ative part  of  the  whole  vast  system  of  the  North  Western 
Railway  Company." 

Of  the  Liverpool  of  his  boyhood,  Mr.  Gladstone  said: 
"When  my  recollections  of  her  were  most  familiar,  she 
was  a  town  of  one  hundred  thousand  persons,  and  the  silver 
cloud  of  smoke  which  floated  above  her  resembled  that  which 
might  appear  over  any  secondary  borough  or  village  of  the 


28  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

country.  I  refer  to  the  period  between  1810  and  1820,  and 
it  is  especially  to  the  latter  part  of  period  that  my  memory 
extends.  I  used  as  a  small  boy  to  look  southward  along 
shore  from  my  father's  windows  at  Seaforth  to  the  town. 
In  those  days  the  space  between  Liverpool  and  Seaforth 
was  very  differently  occupied.  Four  miles  of  the  most 
beautiful  sands  that  I  ever  knew  offered  to  the  aspirations 
of  the  youthful  rider  the  most  delightful  method  of  finding 
access  to  Liverpool,  and  he  had  the  other  inducement  to 
pursue  that  road,  that  there  was  no  other  decent  avenue  to 
the  town.  Bootle  I  remember  a  wilderness  of  sand  hills. 
I  have  seen  wild  roses  growing  upon  the  very  ground  which 
is  now  the  center  of  the  borough.  All  that  land  is  now 
partly  covered  with  residences,  and  partly  with  places  of 
business  and  industry.  In  my  time  but  one  single  house 
stood  upon  the  space  between  Kimrose  brook  and  the  town 
of  Liverpool.  I  rather  think  it  was  associated  with  the 
name  of  Statham,  if  my  memory  serves  me  right,  the  name 
of  the  town  clerk  of  Liverpool." 

He  told  also  on  this  occasion  a  pleasant  and  romantic  story 
of  Hannah  More,  which  links  Mr.  Gladstone  with  a  far  dis- 
tant past. 

"I  believe,"  he  said,  "I  was  four  years  old  at  the  time, 
and  I  remember  Hannah  More  presented  me  with  one  of 
her  little  books — not  uninteresting  for  children — she  told 
me  she  gave  it  to  me  because  '  I  had  just  come  into  the 
world  and  she  was  just  going  out. '" 


QUEEN  VICTORIA  ON  HER  SEVENIH  BIRTHDAY. 


RIGHT  HON.  BENJAMIN  DISRAELI. 
EARL  BEACONSFIELD. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

SCHOOL    DAYS   AT    ETON. 

Ah,  happy  hills  !     Ah,  pleasing-  shade  ! 

Ah,  fields  beloved  in  vain  ! 

Where  once  my  careless  childhood  strayed, 

A  stranger  yet  to  pain  ! 

I  feel  the  gales  that  from  ye  blow, 

A  momentary  bliss  bestow, 

As  waving  fresh  their  gladsome  wing, 

My  weary  soul  they  seem  to  soothe  ; 

And,  redolent  of  joy  and  youth, 

To  breathe  a  second  spring  ! 

— &ray's  Ode  on  Eton  Cottege. 

The  father  of  Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  slow  to  recognize 
the  brilliant  mental  powers  of  his  gifted  son,  and  wide 
awake  to  the  grand  opportunities  that  lay  in  the  path  of 
every  earnest  youth,  he  resolved  to  aid  him  in  every  possi- 
ble way  to  fit  himself  for  a  career  of  usefulness  and  honor. 
To  this  end  the  boy  Gladstone  was  entered  a  scholar  in  the 
famous  Eton  College  in  September,  1821,  being  then  in  his 
thirteenth  year.  The  dew  of  early  youth  was  on  his  brow, 
and  he  was  declared  to  be  "  the  'prettiest  little  boy  that 
ever  went  to  Eton. "  As  a  scholar  he  was  by  common  con- 
sent acknowledged  to  be  God-fearing  and  conscientious, 
pure-minded  and  courageous,  and  humane.  He  was  never 
seen  to  run,  but  was  fond  of  sculling,  and  even  then  given 
to  that  fast  walking  which  he  has  practiced  all  his  life.  At 
school  he  distinguished  himself  by  turning  his  glass  upside 
down  and  refusing  to  drink  a  coarse  toast  at  an  election  din- 
ner, and  for  having  protested  against  the  torture  of  certain 
wretched  animals  which  were  then  regarded  as  fair  game  on 
Ash  Wednesday.  Some  of  his  schoolfellows,  failing  to 

29 


30  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

appreciate  this  early  evidence  of  his  chivalrous  disposition, 
Mr.  Gladstone  offered  to  write  his  reply  in  good  round  hand 
upon  their  faces.  In  the  school  debating  society  he  natu- 
rally took  a  high  place.  In  one  of  his  earliest  recorded 
speeches,  he  declares  that  his  "prejudices  and  his  predilec- 
tions have  long  been  entitled  on  the  side  of  toryism. "  So 
tory  was  he  that,  seeing  a  colt  of  the  name  of  Hampden 
entered  for  the  Derby  between  two  horses  named  Zeal  and 
Lunacy,  he  declared  he  was  in  his  proper  place,  for  Hamp- 
den in  those  days  was  to  him  only  an  illustrious  rebel. 

Celebrated  as  this  school  was  all  over  England,  it  must  be 
admitted  that  the  pupils  were  in  no  great  danger  of  being 
overworked.  In  1845  the  time  devoted  to  study  did  not 
amount  to  eleven  hours  per  week.  An  old  Etonian  thus 
speaks  of  the  nature  of  the  studies  pursued  : 

"The  books  used  in  the  fifth  form — besides  The  Iliad,  The 
>3Cneid,  Horace,  and,  I  think,  some  scraps  of  Ovid  for  repe- 
tition merely — consisted  of  three  l  Selections '  or  '  Read- 
ers ' — Poeta3  Graeci,  which  contained  some  picked  passages 
from  Homer's  Odyssey,  Callimachus,  Theocritus,  etc., 
together  with  Scriptores  Graeci  and  Scriptores  Romani, 
which  were  similarly  made  up  of  tit-bits  from  the  best 
Greek  and  Latin  prose  writers.  A  lad  would  go  on  grind- 
ing at  the  above  scanty  provender  from  the  age  it  might  be 
of  twelve  to  that  of  twenty  with  little  or  no  change. 
Plautus,  Terence,  Lucretius,  Persius,  Juvenal,  Livy,  Taci- 
tus, Cicero,  Demosthenes,  the  tragedians  (except  in  the  head 
master's  division),  Aristophanes,  Pindar,  Herodotus,  Thu- 
cydides — in  short,  all  but  four  of  the  great  authors  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  and  those  four  poets  were  entirely 
unknown  to  us,  except  it  might  be  through  the  medium  of 
certain  fragments  in  the  'Selections'  aforesaid,  where  I 
believe  that  the  majority  of  them  were  wholly  unrepre- 
sented. It  seems  almost  incredible  that  a  young  man  could 
go  up  to  the  University  from  the  upper  fifth  form  of  the 


SCHOOL    DAYS    AT    ETON.  31 

first  classical  school  in  England,  ignorant  almost  of  the  very- 
names  of  these  authors.  Yet  such  was  the  case  sometimes. 
It  was  very  much  my  own  case. " 

When  but  eighteen  years  of  age  Mr.  Gladstone,  under 
the  nom  de  plume  of  "Bartholemy  Bauverie"  contributed 
some  remarkable  articles  to  the  Eton  Miscellany.  He  wrote 
on  "Eloquence,"  on  "A  Chorus  of  Euripides,"  and  fol- 
lowed by  a  powerful  article  on  "Ancient  and  Modern 
Genius  Compared. "  After  taking  the  part  of  the  moderns 
as  against  the  ancients — though  he  by  no  means  depreciates 
the  genius  of  the  latter — the  essayist,  in  concluding  his 
paper,  thus  eloquently  apostrophises  Canning  : 

"It  is  for  those  who  revered  him  in  the  plenitude  of 
his  meridian  glory  to  mourn  over  him  in  the  darkness  of 
his  premature  extinction;  to  mourn  over  the  hopes  that  are 
buried  in  his  grave,  and  the  evils  that  arise  from  his 
withdrawing  from  the  scene  of  life.  Surely  if  eloquence 
never  excelled  and  seldom  equaled — if  an  expanded  mind 
and  judgment  whose  vigor  was  paralleled  only  by  its  sound- 
ness, if  brilliant  wit,  if  a  glowing  imagination,  if  a  warm 
heart,  and  an  unbending  firmness — could  have  strengthened 
the  frail  tenure  and  prolonged  the  momentary  duration  of 
human  existence,  that  man  had  been  immortal!  But 
nature  could  endure  no  longer.  Thus  has  Providence 
ordained  that  inasmuch  as  the  intellect  is  more  brilliant,  it 
shall  be  more  short  lived;  as  its  sphere  is  more  expanded, 
more  swiftly  is  it  summoned  away.  Lest  we  should  give  to 
man  the  honor  due  to  God — lest  we  should  exalt  the  object 
of  our  admiration  into  a  divinity  for  our  worship — He  who 
calls  the  weary  and  the  mourner  to  eternal  rest,  hath  been 
pleased  to  remove  him  from  our  eyes. " 

Then,  after  comparing  the  death  of  the  object  of  his 
early  hero-worship  with  the  death  of  Pitt,  he  says,  finally, 
"The  decrees  of  -inscrutable  Wisdom  are  unknown  to  us; 
but  if  ever  there  was  a  man  for  whose  sake  it  was  meet  to 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

indulge  the  kindly  though  frail  feelings  of  our  nature,  for 
whom  the  tear  of  sorrow  was  to  us  both  prompted  by  affec- 
tion and  dictated  by  duty — that  man  was  George  Canning." 
With  the  daring  of  youth  he  ventured  into  the  realms 
of  poetry.  His  next  contribution  was  entitled  ' '  Richard 
Co3ur  de  Lion, "  an  effort  in  verse.  This  poem  consists  of 
some  two  hundred  and  fifty  lines,  and  the  following  passage 
may  be  taken  as  a  fair  sample  of  the  whole: 

Who  foremost  now  the  deadly  spear  to  dart, 
And  strike  the  jav'lin  to  the  Moslem's  heart? 
Who  foremost  now  to  climb  the  leaguer'd  wall, 
The  first  to  triumph,  or  the  first  to  fall? 
Lo,  where  the  Moslems  rushing  to  the  fight, 
Back  bear  thy  squadrons  in  inglorious  flight. 
With  plumed  helmet,  and  with  glitt'ring  lance, 
'Tis  Richard  bids  his  steel-clad  bands  advance; 
'Tis  Richard  stalks  along  the  blood-dyed  plain, 
And  views  unmoved  the  slaying  and  the  slain; 
'Tis  Richard  bathes  his  hands  in  Moslem  blood, 
And  tinges  Jordan  with  the  purple  flood. 
Yet  where  the  timbrels  ring,  the  trumpets  sound , 
And  tramp  of  horsemen  shakes  the  solid  ground, 
Though  'mid  the  deadly  charge  and  rush  of  fight, 
No  thought  be  theirs  of  terror  or  of  flight, — 
Ofttimes  a  sigh  will  rise,  a  tear  \vill  flow, 
And  youthful  bosoms  melt  in  silent  woe; 
For  who  of  iron  frame  and  harder  heart 
Can  bid  the  mem'ry  of  his  home  depart? 
Tread  the  dark  desert  and  the  thirsty  sand, 
Nor  give  one  thought  to  England's  smiling  land? 
To  scenes  of  bliss,  and  days  of  other  years — 
The  Vale  of  Gladness  and  the  Vale  of  Tears; 
That,  pass'd  and  vanish'd  from  their  loving  sight, 
This  'neath  their  view,  and  wrapt  in  shades  of  night? 

We  are  happy  in  being  able  to  present  from  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's own  pen  a  picture  of  the  Eton  of  his  boyhood.  In 
a  paper  on  Arthur  Henry  Hallam,  contributed  to  the 
Youth's  Companion  for  February,  1898,  we  gain  glimpses 
of  Eton  and  Eton  life  that  are  exceedingly  interesting,  as 


SCHOOL    DAYS    AT    ETON.  33 

well  as  a  record  of  one  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  earliest  and  most 
sacred  friendships  : 

"  Far  back  in  the  distance  of  my  early  life,  and  upon  a 
surface  not  yet  ruffled  by  contention,  there  lies  the  memory 
of  a  friendship  surpassing  every  other  that  has  ever  been 
enjoyed  by  one  greatly  blessed  both  in  the  number  and  in 
the  excellence  of  his  friends. 

"  It  is  the  simple  truth  that  Arthur  Henry  Hallam  was  a 
spirit  so  exceptional  that  everything  with  which  he  was 
brought  into  relation  during  his  shortened  passage  through 
this  world  came  to  be,  through  this  contact,  glorified  by  a 
touch  of  the  ideal.  Among  his  contemporaries  at  Eton,  that 
queen  of  visible  homes  for  the  ideal  schoolboy,  he  stood 
supreme  among  all  his  fellows ;  and  the  long  life  through 
which  I  have  since  wound  my  way,  and  which  has  brought 
me  into  contact  with  so  many  men  of  rich  endowments, 
leaves  him  where  he  then  stood,  as  to  natural  gifts,  so  far 
as  my  estimation  is  concerned. 

"While  intimacy  was  at  this  particular  time  the  most 
delightful  note  of  the  friendship  between  Arthur  Hallam 
and  myself,  I  am  bound  to  say  that  it  had  one  other  and 
more  peculiar  characteristic,  which  was  its  inequality. 
Indeed,  it  was  so  unequal  as  between  his  mental  powers  and 
mine,  that  I  have  questioned  myself  strictly  whether  I  was 
warranted  in  supposing  it  to  have  been  knit  with  such  close- 
ness as  I  have  fondly  supposed.  Of  this,  however,  I  find 
several  decisive  marks.  One  was,  that  we  used  to  corre- 
spond together  during  vacations,  a  practice  not  known  to  me 
by  any  other  example.  Eton  friendships  were  fresh  and 
free,  but  they  found  ample  food  for  the  whole  year  during 
the  eight  or  eight  and  a  half  months  of  term  time.  Another 
proof,  significant  from  its  peculiarity,  I  find  in  a  record 
more  than  once  supplied  by  a  very  arid  journal,  which  at 
that  early  period  I  had  begun  to  keep.  It  bears  witness  that 
I  sometimes  "  sculled  Hallam  up  to  the  Shallows,"  a  point 


3-J.  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

about  two  miles  up  the  stream  of  the  Thames  from  Eton. 
Working  small  boats  (whether  skiff,  "funny" — such  was 
the  name, — or  wherry)  single-handed  was  a  common  prac- 
tice among  Eton  boys,  and  one  which  I  followed  rather  assid- 
uously ;  but  to  carry  a  passenger  up  stream  was  another  mat- 
ter, and  stands  as  I  think  for  a  proof  of  setting  extraordinary 
value  upon  his  society.  Another  recollection,  more  con- 
siderabe,  bears  in  the  same  direction.  Except  upon  special 
occasions,  the  practice  was  that  the  boys  breakfasted,  or 
' '  messed, "  alone,  each  in  his  room.  Now  and  then  a  case 
might  be  found,  in  which  two,  or  even  three,  would  club 
together  their  rolls  and  butter  (the  simple  fare  of  those  days, 
which  knew  nothing  of  habitual  meat  breakfast),  but  this 
only  when  they  lived  under  the  same  roof.  I  had  not  the 
advantage  of  living  in  Mr.  Hawtrey's  house,  and  indeed  it 
was  severed  from  that  of  my  "dame"  by  nearly  the  wrhole 
length  of  Eton,  as  it  stood  in  what  was  termed  Weston's 
yard,  near  those  glorious  and  unrivaled  "playing  fields," 
(I  speak  of  a  date  seventy  years  back.  The  stately  elms 
were  then  in  their  full  glory.  I  fear  that  the  hand  of 
time  has  not  wholly  spared  them,)  whereas  my  window 
looked  out  upon  the  church-yard,  with  the  mass  of  school 
buildings  interposed  between  our  dwellings.  Notwithstand- 
ing this  impediment  we  used,  for  I  forget  how  many  terms, 
regularly  to  mess  together,  and  the  point  of  honor  or  conven- 
ience was  not  allowed  to  interfere,  for  the  scene  of  opera- 
tions shifted,  week  about,  from  his  room  to  mine,  and  vice 
versa.  It  was  a  grief  to  me,  in  my  posthumous  visits  to 
Eton,  to  be  unable  to  identify  his  room,  consecrated  by  the 
fondest  memories,  for  it  had  been  sacrificed  to  the  necessary 
improvements  of  an  ill-planned  but  most  hospitable  resi- 
dence. 

"It  was  probably  well  for  him  that  he  participated  in  no 
game  or  strong  bodily  exercise,  as  I  imagine  that  it  might 
have  precipitated  the  effects  of  that  hidden  organic  malfor- 


SCHOOL    DAYS    AT    ETON.  35 

mation  which  put  an  end  to  his  life  in  1833,  when  he  was 
but  twenty-two  years  old.  But  at  these  meals,  and  in 
walks,  often  to  the  monument  of  Gray,  so  appropriately 
placed  near  the  *  churchyard '  of  the  immortal  '  Elegy, ' 
were  mainly  carried  on  our  conversations.  It  is  evident  from 
notices  still  remaining,  that  they  partook  pretty  largely  of  an 
argumentative  character.  On  Sunday,  May  14,  1826, 1  find 
this  record  in  my  journal:  'Stiff  arguments  with  Hallam, 
as  usual  on  Sundays,  about  articles,  creeds,  etc.'  It  is  dif- 
ficult for  me  now  to  conceive  how  during  these  years  he 
bore  with  me;  since  not  only  was  I  inferior  to  him  in  knowl- 
edge and  dialectic  ability,  but  my  mind '  was  '  cabined, 
cribbed,  confined, '  by  an  intolerance  which  I  ascribe  to  my 
having  been  brought  up  in  what  were  then  termed  Evangel- 
ical ideas — ideas,  I  must  add,  that  in  other  respects  were 
frequently  productive  of  great  and  vital  good. 

' '  The  common  bond  among  all  the  boys  of  any  consider- 
able prominence  at  Eton  was  the  association  for  debating  all 
unforbidden  subjects,  which  has  already  been  named  and 
which  is  known  as  'The  Society.'  Such  institutions  are 
now  very  widely  spread;  but  at  the  date  when  this  one  was 
founded,  in  the  year  181},  it  might  claim  the  honors  of  a 
discovery,  for  it  was  in  exclusive  possession  of  the  field. 
During  its  career  of  about  four-score  years  it  has  supplied 
the  British  Empire  with  no  less  than  four  prime  ministers. 
It  fluctuated  in  efficiency  as  the  touch  of  time  and  change 
passed  over  it;  but  during  the  period  of  Arthur  Hallam's 
membership  it  was  regenerated  by  the  introduction  of  that 
rare  and  most  often  precious  character,  an  enthusiast,  by 
name  James  Milnes  Gaskell. 

"This  youth  had  a  political  faculty,  which  probably  suf- 
fered in  the  end  from  an  absorbing  and  exclusive  predom- 
inance in  mind  and  life  such  as  to  check  his  general  devel- 
opment of  mental  character,  yet  which  in  its  precocious 
ripeness  secured  for  him  not  the  notice  only,  but  what  might 


"36  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

also  be  called  the  close  friendship  of  Mr.  Canning,  that  com- 
manding luminary  of  the  twenties,  doomed  to  die  at  Chis- 

O  * 

wick  in  1827,  in  the  very  chamber  in  which  Mr.  Fox  had 
breathed  his  last  only  twenty-one  years  before.  Gaskell 
found  our  society,  if  not  at  the  point,  yet  afflicted  with  a 
premonitory  lethargy,  almost  of  death;  but  he  breathed  life 
by  his  assiduity  and  energy  into  every  artery  and  vein  of 
the  body,  and  gave  to  Arthur  Hallam  a  worthy  field  for  the 
training  of  his  eloquence  and  the  exhibition  of  his  always 
temperate  but  yet  vivid  and  enlightened  ideas,  stamped 
with  traditional  Whiggism,  yet  incapable  of  being  perma- 
nently trammeled  by  any  artificial  restraints. 

"I  have  mentioned  that  we  were  inhibited  from  debating 
any  events  not  more  than  fifty  years  old,  and  I  recollect  the 
growling  of  our  famous  Doctor  Keats  when  we  fished  out 
from  the  Indian  administration  of  Warren  Hastings  a  ques- 
tion lying  very  close  upon  the  line.  But  Gaskell  was  equal 
to  the  occasion.  He  had  a  small  but  pleasant  apartment  in 
a  private  house,  which  his  private  tutor  was  privileged  to 
occupy.  In  this  room  four  or  five  of  us  would  meet  and 
debate  without  restraint  the  questions  of  modern  politics. 
Here  we  reveled  in  the  controversies  between  Pitt  and  Fox. 
I  think  we  were  mostly,  if  not  all,  friendly  to  Roman 
Catholic  Emancipation,  and  to  those  initial  measures  of  free 
trade  which  Huskisson,  supported  by  Mr.  Canning,  devised 
with  skill  and  supported  with  courage,  in  the  face  of  bit- 
terness of  hatred  from  the  'harassed  interests,'  which  I 
think  underwent  at  least  mitigation  in  the  later  stages  of 
the  controversv. " 


CHAPTER  V. 

STUDENT    LIFE    AT    OXFORD. 

"Deeper,  deeper,  let  us  toil 
In  the  mines  of  knowledge, 
Learning's  wealth  and  freedom's  spoil, 
Win  from  school  and  college. 
Delve  we  there  for  brighter  gems 
Than  the  stars  of  diadems." 

— Charles  Mackay. 

••  1  have  a  debt  of  my  heart's  own  to  thee, 

School  of  my  soul!  old  lime  and  cloister  shade, 
Which  I,  strange  suitor,  should  lament  to  see 

Fully  acquitted  and  exactly  paid: 
The  first  ripe  taste  of  manhood's  best  delights, 

Knowledge  imbibed,  while  mind  and  heart  agree, 
In  sweet  belated  talk  on  winter  nights, 

With  friends  whom  growing  time  keeps  dear  to   me, — 
Such  things  I  owe  thee,  and  not  only  these." 

— (R.  M.  Mttnes)  Lord  Houghton. 

In  the  brief  interim  between  the  school  days  at  Eton  and 
the  college  days  at  Oxford,  Mr.  Gladstone  enjoyed  the 
privilege  of  the  private  teachings  of  Doctor  Turner,  who 
afterward  became  Bishop  of  Calcutta.  At  this  period  his 
habits  of  study  became  systematized  and  fixed.  A  born  stu- 
dent, he  now  so  arranged  his  time  that  a  certain  number  of 
hours  each  day  were  allotted  to  close  exacting,  study.  In 
these  formative  years  of  his  life,  from  the  age  of  eighteen 
till  he  was  twenty-one,  wherever  he  was,  whether  with  his 
tutor,  or  at  home,  or  at  Liverpool,  at  the  University,  or  spend- 
ing a  vacation  in  the  country,  it  was  his  constant  rule  to 
devote  at  least  six  or  seven  hours  a  day  to  good  hard  work. 
From  ten  o'clock  till  two,  and  then  for  two  or  three  hours 


38 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 


in  the  evening  he  was  diligently  engaged  in  study.  This 
course  was  the  fixed  order  of  his  young  life.  Nothing  was 
allowed  to  interfere  with  this  plan.  These  hours  were 
sacred.  Life  was  very  real  and  very  earnest.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone pursued  his  studies  with  an  ardor  that  fell  little  short 
of  devotion 


CHRIST   CHURCH,   OXFORD. 

"He  is  such  an  ardent  creature"  said  Lord  Beaconsfield 
on  one  occasion  with  a  touch  of  satire  in  the  utterance.  It 
is  to  the  order  and  ceaseless  ardor  of  these  early  days  that 
Mr.  Gladstone  owed  largely  the  accuracy  and  completeness 
of  the  wonderful  scholarship  of  his  riper  years. 

In  the  year  1829 — the  year  in  which  Doctor  Turner,  his 
tutor,  was  appointed  Bishop  of  Calcutta — Mr.  Gladstone 
was  entered  as  a  student  of  Christ  Church  College,  Oxford. 
This  college  has  always  been  regarded  as  the  most  aristo- 


STUDENT    LIFE    AT    OXFORD.  39 

cratic  of  all  the  colleges  of  aristocratic  Oxford.  '  'An  Oxford 
man"  has  always  been  looked  upon  and  is  looked  upon  still 
as  a  man  of  conservative  sentiments  and  aristocratic  preju- 
dices. The  training  at  Christ  Church  College  had  precisely 
this  influence  on  the  mind  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  Loyal  to  the  old- 
time  traditions  of  his  country,  and  true  to  the  deepest  and 
most  sacred  convictions  of  freedom,  he  became  saturated  with 
those  influences  which  gave  Macauley  the  right  to  speak  of 
him  not  many  years  later  as  "the  rising  hope  of  the  Tory 
party. " 

In  the  month  of  December,  1878,  nearly  half  a  century 
after  the  Christ  College  days,  in  an  address  delivered  at  the 
opening  of  the  Palmerston  Club,  Oxford,  Mr.  Gladstone, 
in  referring  to  this  matter,  said  : 

'  *  I  trace  in  the  education  of  Oxford,  of  my  own  time, 
one  great  defect.  Perhaps  it  was  my  own  fault ;  but  I  must 
admit  that  I  did  not  learn,  when  at  Oxford,  that  which  I 
have  learned  since — viz. ,  to  set  a  due  value  on  the  imper- 
ishable and  inestimable  principles  of  human  liberty.  The 
temper  which,  I  think,  too  much  prevailed  in  academic  cir- 
cles was,  that  liberty  was  regarded  with  jealousy,  and  fear 
could  not  be  wholly  dispensed  with.  I  think  that  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  Conservative  party  is  jealousy  of  liberty,  and  of 
the  whole  people,  only  qualified  by  fear ;  but  I  think  the  policy 
of  the  Liberal  party  is  trust  in  the  people,  only  qualified  by 
prudence.  I  can  only  assure  you,  gentlemen,  that  now  I 
am  in  front  of  extended  popular  privileges,  I  have  no  fear 
of  those  enlargements  of  the  constitution  that  seem  to  be 
approaching.  On  the  contrary,  I  hail  them  with  desire.  I 
am  not  in  the  least  degree  conscious  that  I  have  less  rever- 
ence for  antiquity,  for  the  beautiful  and  good  and  glorious 
charges  that  our  ancestors  have  handed  down  to  us  as  a 
patrimony  to  our  race,  than  I  had  in  other  days  when  I  held 
other  political  opinions.  I  have  learned  to  set  the  true  value 


40  LIFE    OF    GLADSTO-NK. 

upon  human  liberty,  and  in  whatever  I  have  changed,  there; 
and  there  only,  has  been  the  explanation  of  the  change. " 

Little  did  the  young  student  of  Oxford  dream  that  a  time 
would  ever  come  when  he  would  entertain  such  principles 
as  these,  or  give  utterance  to  such  radical  sentiments.  It 
only  needed  that  the  young  recluse  of  Oxford  should  be 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  people,  that  he  should  know 
their  wants  and  their  weakness,  their  hopes  and  their  aspi- 
rations in  order  that  the  scope  of  his  convictions  should 
widen  and  his  groundless  prejudices  should  vanish. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  influence  at  Oxford  was  of  an  eminently 
salutary  character.  One  who  knew  him  well  in  these  days 
speaks  thus  of  his  University  life :  "Lord  Lincoln's  friend- 
ship for  Gladstone  was  of  the  stanchest,  and  equally  credit- 
able to  both.  If  Gladstone  owed  something  to  the  Duke  of 
Newcastle's  patronage,  Lord  Lincoln  owed  a  great  deal  more 
to  his  friend — as  he  ever  generously  confessed — for  the 
lesson  in  good  conduct  which  he  derived  from  him.  There 
was  a  very  fast  set  at  Christ  Church,  of  which  the  Marquis 
of  Waterford  was  the  guiding  spirit,  and  wealthy  young 
noblemen  were  under  strong  temptations  to  join  that  set. 
Late  supper  parties,  gambling  and  nocturnal  expeditions  to 
screw  up  the  doors  of  dons  or  to  break  the  furniture  in  hard- 
reading  men's  rooms,  were  among  the  least  of  the  freaks  in 
which  the  gay  young  '  tufts '  indulged,  and  it  required  some 
moral  courage  even  to  condemn  their  follies  by  word  too 
openly.  A  midnight  bath  in  Mercury — that  is,  the  foun- 
tain in  the  midst  of  Tom  Quad — was  often  the  penalty 
which  outspoken  critics  were  made  to  pay,  for  the  '  tufts  ' 
administered  a  retributory  justice  of  their  own,  much  after 
the  fashion  of  the  Mohawks.  But  they  never  dared  touch 
Gladstone,  although  he  did  not  scruple  to  give  them  his 
mind  about  the  worst  of  their  pranks,  and  many  well-dis- 
posed youngsters  like  Lord  Lincoln  instinctively  rallied  to 
the  strong  young  fellow  who  did  not  know  what  fear  was, 


STUDENT    LIFE    AT    OXFORD.  41 

and  who,  notwithstanding  that  he  was  so  reasonable  and 
steady,  took  such  pleasure  in  healthy  amusements  and  cheer- 
ful society.  For  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  Gladstone 
was  ascetically  inclined.  He  was  one  of  the  most  hospitable 
men  at  Christ  Church,  which  was  saying  a  good  deal." 

Speaking  of  this  period,  and  especially  of  the  religious 
tendencies  of  the  University,  Mr.  Gladstone  says :  "At  the 
time  I  resided  at  Oxford,  from  1828  to  1831,  no  sign  of 
what  was  afterward  known  as  the  Tractarian  Movement  had 
yet  appeared.  A  steady,  clear,  but  dry,  Anglican  orthodoxy 
bore  sway,  and  frowned  this  way  or  that  at  the  first  indication 
to  diverge  from  the  beaten  path.  Dr.  Pusey  was  at  the  time 
revered  for  his  piety  and  charity,  no  less  than  admired  for 
his  learning  and  talent,  but  suspected,  I  believe,  of  sympathy 
with  the  German  theology,  in  which  he  was  known  to  be 
profoundly  versed.  Dr.  Newman  was  thought  to  have 
about  him  the  flavor  of  what  he  has  now  told  the  world 
were  the  opinions  he  derived  from  the  works  of  Dr.  Thomas 
Scott.  Mr.  Keble,  l  the  sweet  singer  of  Israel '  and  a  true 
saint,  if  this  generation  has  seen  one,  did  not  reside  in 
Oxford.  There  was  nothing  at  that  time  in  the  theology  or 
in  the  religious  life  at  the  University  to  indicate  what  was 
so  soon  to  come." 

In  his  able  sketch  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  career,  Mr.  Walter 
Jerrold  says,  in  referring  to  the  spiritual  side  of  the  life  at 
Oxford  during  these  four  years  :  "We  do  not  find  any 
striking  movement  in  progress  ;  the  Catholic  Emancipation 
question  had  created  some  stir,  and  was  yet  a  sore  subject 
with  many.  The  famous  Tractarian  Movement,  with  all  its 
far-reaching  effects,  did  not  commence  until  a  few  years 
later.  Gladstone,  who  was  looked  upon  as  the  most  relig- 
ious member  of  his  set,  was  always  an  earnest  student  of 
theology  as  well  as  a  man  of  strong  moral  feeling.  It  is  not, 
therefore,  surprising  to  find  that  he  was  at  this  time  very 
desirous  of  entering  the  church.  He,  however,  never  really 


4:2  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

decided  upon  such  a  step,  and  finally  commenced  his-  polit- 
ical career  in  accordance  with  the  wishes  of  his  father.  It 
is  strange  to  reflect  upon  that  the  two  most  remarkable  men 
at  Oxford  during  the  early  thirties,  each  wishing  to  take  up 
certain  work,  should  not  only  take  up  with  other  work,  but 
doing  it,  should  rise  to  the  prominent  positions  of  leaders 
of  men.  William  Ewart  Gladstone,  wishing  to  enter  the 
church,  became  in  course  of  time,  Prime  Minister  of  Bug- 
land,  and  the  acknowledged  political  leader  of  the  people  ; 
while  his  friend  and  contemporary,  Henry  Edward  Man- 
ning, wishing  for  a  life  in  the  world  of  politics,  was  forced 
by  circumstances  to  seek  some  other  path,  entered  the 
English  Church,  became  Archdeacon,  seceded  to  the  Church 
of  Rome,  and  died  a  Cardinal. " 

When  Mr.  Gladstone  went  to  Oxford  he  met  many  of  his 
old  Eton  friends  there.  Others  had  entered  the  University 
of  Cambridge,  among  whom  were  Arthur  Henry  Hallam, 
George  Selwyn  and  Richard  Monckton  Milnes,  better  known 
in  our  day  as  Lord  Houghton.  Tennyson  was  also  at  Cam- 
bridge enjoying  that  fellowship  with  Hallam  that  he  has 
made  immortal  in  the  pages  of  "In  Memoriam." 

An  interesting  episode  transpired  about  this  time,  well 
worthy  of  brief  notice.  The  debaters  of  the  Oxford  Union 
were  attracting  great  attention.  Speaking  of  this  debating 
Society,  an  Oxford  man  of  that  day  says  :  ' '  We  could 
hardly  name  any  institution  in  Oxford  which  has  been  more 
useful  in  encouraging  a  taste  for  study  and  for  general  read- 
ing than  this  club.  It  has  not  only  supplied  a  school  for 
speaking  for  those  who  intended  to  pursue  the  professions 
of  the  law  and  the  church,  or  to  embrace  political  life,  but 
furnished  a  theater  for  the  display  of  miscellaneous  knowl- 
edge, and  brought  together  most  of  the  distinguished  young 
men  of  the  University." 

The  relative  position  of  Shelley  and  Byron  in  the  rank 
of  great  poets  of  the  age  was  at  this  time  exciting  consid- 


STUDENT    LIFE    AT    OXFORD.  43 

erable  interest  in  the  public  mind.  Shelley  had  been  ex- 
pelled from  Oxford,  and  in  the  judgment  of  many  of  his 
admirers  had  been  very  badly  used  by  the  University.  A 
notable  debate  took  place  in  Oxford  on  this  question,  in 
which,  by  special  arrangement  between  Cambridge  and  Ox- 
ford, certain  Cambridge  men  took  part.  Hallam,  Mimes 
and  Selwyn  drove  over  from  Cambridge  to  speak  in  the 
interests  of  Shelley.  The  debate  was  opened  by  Sir  Francis 
Doyle  on  behalf  of  Shelley.  Only  one  Oxford  man  was  found 
to  stand  as  Byron's  advocate,  and  that  was  Henry  Edward 
Manning,  who  became  afterward  the  Cardinal  Archbishop 
of  Westminster.  Manning  was  regarded  as  the  most  elo- 
quent and  persuasive  member  of  the  Oxford  Debating 
Union.  But  his  eloquent  and  impassioned  plea  for  Byron 
was  all  in  vain.  At  the  end  of  the  debate,  by  a  vote  of 
ninety  to  thirty-three,  the  palm  of  superiority  was  awarded 
to  Shelley.  Referring  to  this  incident  many  years  afterward 
Lord  Houghton,  one  of  the  speakers  from  Cambridge, 
observed — at  the  inauguration  of  the  new  buildings  of  the 
Cambridge  Union  Society  in  1866 — "At  that  time  we  (the 
Cambridge  undergraduates)  were  all  very  full  of  Mr.  Shelley 
We  had  printed  his  'Adonais '  for  the  first  time  in  England, 
and  a  friend  of  ours  suggested  that,  as  he  had  been  expelled 
from  Oxford,  and  been  very  badly  treated  in  that  Univer- 
sity, it  would  be  a  grand  thing  for  us  to  defend  him  there. 
With  the  permission  of  the  Cambridge  authorities  they 
accordingly  went  to  Oxford — at  that  time  a  long,  dreary, 
post-chaise  journey  of  ten  hours — and  were  hospitably  en- 
tertained by  Mr.  Manning  of  Balliol  and  Mr.  Gladstone  of 
Christ  Church.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  at  this  time  only  a 
'freshman,'  and  could  not  take  any  part  in  the  debate, 
although  he  was  present  as  a  '  probationary  member. ' " 

Very  interesting  information  concerning  this  great  debat- 
ing society  may  be  found  in  the  reports  of  the  late  Librarian, 
Mr.  E.  B.  Nicholson. 


±-t  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

The  Oxford  Union  came  into  existence  in  the  spring  of 
1823,  and  fifty  years  later  it  celebrated  its  jubilee  by  a  ban- 
quet, at  which  Lord  Selborne  took  the  chair.  It  is  not  a 
little  remarkable  that  Mr.  Gladstone's  Ministry  included  no 
fewer  than  seven  of  the  early  presidents  of  the  society,  viz., 
the  ex-Premier  himself,  Lord  Selborne,  Mr.  Lowe,  Mr. 
Cardwell,  the  Attorney-General,  Mr.  Goschen  and  Mr. 
Knatchbull-Hugessen.  Although  the  Union  owed  its  origin 
to  a  few  Balliol  men,  three-fifths  of  the  members  of  the 
United  Debating  Society  came  from  Christ  Church  and 
Oriel.  The  Wilberforces  attained  great  distinction  in  the 
society. 

From  1829  to  1834  is  described  as  the  most  active  and 
most  brilliant  period  in  the  history  of  the  Union.  In  the 
course  of  these  five  years  the  presidency  wras  held  by 
(amongst  other)  Mr.  Gladstone,  Mr.  Sidney  Herbert,  the 
Duke  of  Newcastle,  Lord  Selborne,  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury and  Mr.  Lowe.  Mr.  Gladstone  made  his  first  speech 
on  the  llth  of  February,  1830,  and  was  the  same  night 
elected  a  member  of  the  committee.  The  following  year 
he  succeeded  Mr.  Milnes  Gaskell  in  the  office  of  secretary. 
His  minutes  are  neat;  proper  names  are  underlined  and  half 
printed.  As  secretary  he  opposed  a  motion  for  the  removal 
of  Jewish  disabilities.  He  also  moved  that  the  Wellington 
Administration  was  undeserving  of  the  country's  confidence: 
Gaskell,  Lyall,  and  Lord  Lincoln  supported;  Sidney  Her- 
bert and  the  Marquis  (now  Duke)  of  Abercorn  opposed 
him.  The  motion  was  carried  by  57  to  56,  and  the  natural 
exultation  of  the  mover  betrayed  itself  in  such  irregular 
entries  as  "tremendous  cheers,"  "repeated  cheering." 
The  following  week  he  was*  elected  president. 

It  was  also  claimed  that  in  this  society  the  undergraduate 
might  learn  for  the  first  time  to  think  upon  political  sub- 
jects, and  could  improve  his  acquaintance  with  modern  his- 
tory— especially  that  of  his  own  country.  The  sharp 


STUDENT   LIFE    AT    OXFORD.  •     45 

encounter  of  rival  wits  was  useful  in  expanding  the  mind 
and  in  enlarging  the  scope  of  its  impressions.  Further,  it 
was  remarked  that  unless  a  student  was  so  perverse  as  to  set 
himself  entirely  against  the  prevailing  tone  of  feeling  which 
pervaded  all  classes  in  Oxford  he  would  probably  acquire 
from  conviction,  as  well  as  prejudice,  a  spirit  of  devoted 
loyalty,  of  warm  attachment  to  the  liberties  and  ancient 
institutions  of  his  country,  a  dislike  and  dread  of  rash  inno- 
vation, and  admiration  approaching  to  reverence  for  the 
orthodox  and  apostolic  English  Church.  All  this  ' '  leads 
by  an  easy  and  natural  step  to  serious  meditation  upon  the 
vital  matter  of  religion,  and  this  contributes  more  than  any- 
thing to  strengthen  the  good  resolutions  and  to  settle  the 
character  of  a  high-minded  young  man.  He  becomes  dis- 
tinguished for  polish  of  manners,  steadiness  of  morals  and 
strictness  of  reading."  The  opponents  of  Oxford  culture 
affirmed,  on  the  other  hand,  that  its  tendency  was  toward 
intolerance  and  bigotry,  both  in  religion  and  politics. 

In  those  stormy  times  it  was  impossible  that  the  Reform 
Bill  should  escape  notice.  In  the  summer  of  1831  the 
theme  was  taken  up  for  debate  in  the  Oxford  Union.  Mr. 
Gladstone  made  a  bold  and  exhaustive  speech  on  this  occa- 
sion in  determined  and  uncompromising  opposition  to  the 
bill.  The  speech  was  delivered  when  the  young  orator  was 
only  in  his  twenty-second  year.  Charles  (afterward 
Bishop)  Wordsworth  said  it  was  better  than  any  speech  he 
had  heard  during  the  five  days'  debate  in  the  House  of  Lords, 
which  he  had  closely  followed.  Lord  Lincoln,  a  fellow- 
student  and  friend  of  Gladstone,  wrote  to  his  father,  the 
Duke  of  Newcastle,  and  said  :  "A  man  has  risen  in  Israel." 
This  vigorous  onslaught  on  Lord,  John  Kussell's  reform  bill 
stamped  the  speaker  as  a  finished  orator,  and  within  eight- 
een months  of  its  delivery  Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  member  of 
the  House  of  Commons. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

MEMBER    OF   PARLIAMENT    FOR   NEWARK. 

We  need  men  in  society  who  stand  apart  from  the  little  fights, 
petty  controversies,  and  angry  contentions  which  seem  to  be  part  and 
parcel  of  daily  life,  and  who  shall  speak  great  principles,  breathe  a 
heavenly  influence,  and  bring  to  bear  on  combatants  of  all  kinds  con- 
siderations which  shall  survive  all  their  misunderstandings. 

—Joseph  Parker,  D.  D. 

*     No  star  shines  brighter  than  the  kingly  man, 
Who  nobly  earns  whatever  crown  he  wears, 
****** 

And  the  white  banner  of  his  manhood  bears 
Through  all  the  years  uplifted  to  the  skies. 

—Mrs.  J".  C.  R.  Dorr. 

At  the  close  of  his  University  course  Mr.  Gladstone 
indulged  in  what  was  then  the  luxury  of  the  few,  but  which 
in  these  days  has  become  the  common  privilege  of  the  many. 
In  the  spring  of  1832  he  went  abroad,  and  for  six  months 
he  wandered  with  growing  delight  amid  the  historic  fields 
of  sunny  Italy.  During  these  eventful  months,  "Eng- 
land, "  says  Mr.  Barnett  Smith,  ' '  was  in  a  condition  of 
feverish  political  excitement  and  expectancy.  The  people 
had  just  fought  and  won  one  of  the  greatest  constitutional 
battles  recorded  in  our  parliamentary  history.  After  a 
prolonged  struggle,  a  defiance  of  public  order,  and  riots  in 
various  parts  of  the  country,  the  Reform  Bill  had  become  a 
law.  The  King  had  clearly  perceived  the  wishes  of  the 
people,  and,  disregarding  the  advice  of  those  members  of 
the  aristocracy  who  recommended  him  to  brave  the  national 
will,  had  signified  his  assent  to  the  measure,  which  could 
no  longer  be  delayed  with  safety.  The  bill  became  a  law 

46 


MEMBER    OF   PARLIAMENT    FOR    NEWARK.  47 

on  the  7th  of  June,  his  Majesty  being  represented  by  royal 
commissioners,  although  a  portion  of  the  press  loudly 
demanded  the  presence  of  the  King  himself  at  the  final  stage 
of  a  measure  which  transformed  the  whole  of  the  electoral 
arrangements  of  the  United  Kingdom.  It  was  alleged  that 
the  Sovereign  would  forfeit  the  confidence  of  all  true 
patriots  if  he  did  not  perform  this  ceremony  in  person,  and 
exhibit  himself  as  publicly  as  possible  in  testimony  of  the 
subjugation  to  which  his  crown  and  the  peers  had  been 
reduced.  But  the  King,  probably  considering  that  he  had 
already  made  sufficient  sacrifices  to  the  popular  will,  declined 
to  attend  the  ceremony  in  the  House  of  Lords. " 

Walpole  says  :  ' '  King  and  Queen  sat  sullenly  apart  in 
their  palace.  Peer  and  country  gentleman  moodily  awaited 
the  ruin  of  their  country  and  the  destruction  of  their  prop- 
erty. Fanatacism  still  raved  at  the  wickedness  of  a  people  ; 
the  people,  clamoring  for  work,  still  succumbed  before  the 
mysterious  disease,  which  was  continually  claiming  more 
and  more  victims.  But  the  nation  cared  not  for  the  sullen- 
ness  of  the  court,  the  forebodings  of  the  landed  classes,  the 
ravings  of  the  pulpit,  or  even  the  mysterious  operations  of 
a  new  plague.  The  deep  gloom  which  had  overshadowed 
the  land  had  been  relieved  by  one  single  ray.  The  victory 
had  been  won.  The  bill  had  become  law." 

Parliament  was  dissolved,  and  the  first  general  election 
after  the  passage  of  the  Reform  Bill  was  looked  forward  to 
with  great  interest  and  anxiety.  It  was  to  be  the  opening  of 
a  new  chapter  in  English  history.  What  the  pages  of  that 
chapter  would  record  it  was  difficult  to  predict.  Trade  was 
bad,  the  national  credit  was  low,  the  cholera  was  raging, 
filling  thousands  of  graves.  Pious  people  said  the  vengeance 
of  God  was  about  to  fall  upon  the  nation.  Some  predicted 
that  the  end  of  the  world  was  near,  while  others  declared 
that  they  saw  the  first  breaking  dawn  of  a  glorious  millen- 
nium. Early  in  September  of  this  memorable  year,  1832, 


48  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Mr.  Gladstone  having  received  an  overture  from  the  Duke 
of  Newcastle  (with  whose  son,  the  Earl  of  Lincoln,  he  was 
on  terms  of  intimate  friendship)  to  contest  the  representation 
of  Newark,  hurried  back  from  the  Continent  for  that  pur- 
pose. Before  the  close  of  September,  1832,  he  was  actively 
engaged  in  canvassing  the  borough.  He  immediately 
became  very  popular  in  the  town,  and  one  of  the  local  jour- 
nals remarked  that  if  candor  and  ability  had  any  influence 
upon  the  electors  there  would  soon  be  a  change  in  the  rep- 
resentation. A  week  later  came  accounts  of  glorious  meet- 
ings, with  the  assurance  that  Gladstone's  return  might  be 
fully  calculated  upon. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  first  election  address  was  dated  "Clin- 
ton Arms,  Newark,  Oct.  9th,  1832,"  and  was  inscribed  :  "  To 
the  worthy  and  independent  electors  of  the  Borough  of  New- 
ark." As  this  document,  in  the  light  of  subsequent  events, 
has  more  than  a  passing  interest,  and  is  distinguished  for  its 
ingenious  reasoning  upon  the  great  question  of  slavery  then 
agitating  the  public  mind,  we  present  it  verbatim  : 

' '  Having  now  completed  my  canvass,  I  think  it  my  duty 
as  well  to  remind  you  of  the  principles  on  which  I  have 
solicited  your  votes,  as  freely  to  assure  my  friends  that  its 
result  has  placed  my  success  beyond  a  doubt. 

' '  I  have  not  requested  your  favor  on  the  ground  of  adher- 
ence to  the  opinions  of  any  man  or  party,  further  than  such 
adherence  can  be  fairly  understood  from  the  conviction  I 
have  not  hesitated  to  avow,  that  we  must  watch  and  resist  that 
uninquiring  and  undiscriminating  desire  for  change  amongst 
us,  which  threatens  to  produce,  along  with  partial  good,  a 
melancholy  preponderance  of  mischief  ;  which,  I  am  per- 
suaded, would  aggravate  beyond  computation  the  deep- 
seated  evils  of  our  social  state,  and  the  heavy  burthens  of 
our  industrial  classes  ;  which,  by  disturbing  our  peace, 
destroys  confidence  and  strikes  at  the  root  of  prosperity. 


LORD  ROSEBERRY. 


LORD  SALISBUHY. 


MEMBER    OF    PARLIAMENT    FOR    NEWARK.  49 

Thus  it  has  done  already;  and  thus,  we  must  therefore 
believe,  it  will  do. 

' '  For  the  mitigation  of  those  evils,  we  must,  I  think,  look 
not  only  to  particular  measures,  but  to  the  restoration  of 
sounder  general  principles.  I  mean  especially  that  principle 
on  which  alone  the  incorporation  of  Religion  with  the  State, 
in  our  Constitution,  can  be  defended  ;  that  the  duties  of 
governors  are  strictly  and  peculiarly  religious  ;  and  that 
legislatures,  like  individuals,  are  bound  to  carry  throughout 
their  acts  the  spirit  of  the  high  truths  they  have  acknowl- 
edged. Principles  are  now  arrayed  against  our  institutions  ; 
and  not  by  truckling  nor  by  temporizing — not  by  oppres- 
sion nor  corruption  —  but  by  principles  they  must  be 
met. 

' '  Among  the  first  results  should  be  a  sedulous  and  special 
attention  to  the  interests  of  the  poor,  founded  upon  the  rule 
that  those  who  are  the  least  able  to  take  care  of  themselves 
should  be  most  regarded  by  others.  Particularly  it  is  a 
duty  to  endeavor  by  every  means,  that  labor  may  receive 
adequate  remuneration'  which,  unhappily,  among  several 
classes  of  our  fellow-countrymen,  is  not  now  the  case. 
Whatever  measures,  therefore,  whether  by  correction  of  the 
poor  laws,  allotment  of  cottage  grounds,  or  otherwise,  tend 
to  promote  this  object,  I  deem  entitled  to  the  warmest  sup- 
port with  all  such  as  are  calculated  to  secure  sound  moral 
conduct  in  any  class  of  society. 

' ;  I  proceed  to  the  momentous  question  of  Slavery,  which 
I  have  found  entertained  among  you  in  that  candid  and  tem- 
perate spirit  which  alone  befits  its  nature,  or  promises  to 
remove  its  difficulties.  If  I  have  not  recognized  the  right 
of  an  irresponsible  society  to  interpose  between  me  and 
the  electors,  it  has  not  been  from  any  disrespect  to  its 
members,  nor  from  unwillingness  to  answer  theirs  or  any 
other  questions  on  which  the  electors  may  desire  to  know 
my  views.  To  the  esteemed  secretary  of  the  society  I  sub- 


5(  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

mitted  my  reasons  for  silence  ;  and  I  made  a  point  of  stat- 
in o-  these  views  to  him,  in  his  character  of  a  voter. 

o  ' 

"As  regards  the  abstract  lawfulness  of  Slavery,  I 
acknowledge  it  simply  as  importing  the  right  of  one  man  to 
the  labor  of  another  ;  and  I  rest  it  upon  the  fact  that  Scrip- 
ture, the  paramount  authority  upon  such  a  point,  gives 
directions  to  persons  standing  in  the  relation  of  master  to 
slave,  for  their  conduct  in  that  relation  ;  whereas,  were  the 
matter  absolutely  and  necessarily  sinful,  it  would  not  regu- 
late the  manner.  Assuming  sin  as  the  cause  of  degradation, 
it  strives,  and  strives  most  effectually,  to  cure  the  latter  by 
extirpating  the  former.  We  are  agreed  that  both  the  phys- 
ical and  the  moral  bondage  of  the  slave  are  to  be  abolished. 
The  question  is  as  to  the  order,  and  the  order  only  ;  now 
Scripture  attacks  the  moral  evil  before  the  temporal  one, 
and  the  temporal  through  the  moral  one,  and  I  am  content 
with  the  order  which  Scripture  has  established. 

* '  To  this  end,  I  desire  to  see  immediately  set  on  foot,  by 
impartial  and  sovereign  authority,  an  universal  and  efficient 
system  of  Christian  instruction,  not  intended  to  resist 
designs  of  individual  piety  and  wisdom  for  the  religious 
improvement  of  the  negroes,  but  to  do  thoroughly  what 
they  can  only  do  partially. 

"  As  regards  immediate  emancipation,  whether  with  or 
without  compensation,  there  are  several  minor  reasons 
against  it ;  but  that  which  weighs  with  me  is,  that  it  would, 
I  much  fear,  exchange  the  evils  now  affecting  the  negro  for 
others  which  are  weightier — for  a  relapse  into  deeper 
debasement,  if  not  for  bloodshed  and  internal  war.  Let 
fitness  be  made  a  condition  for  emancipation  ;  and  let  us 
strive  to  bring  him  to  that  fitness  by  the  shortest  possible 
course.  Let  him  enjoy  the  means  of  earning  his  freedom 
through  honest  and  industrious  habits;  thus  the  same  instru- 
ments which  attain  his  liberty  shall  likewise  render  him 
competent  to  use  it ;  and  thus,  I  earnestly  trust;  without 


ENTRANCE  TO  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS. 


MEMBER    OF    PARLIAMENT    FOR    NEWARK.  51 

risk  of  blood,  without  violation  of  property,  with  unim- 
paired benefit  to  the  negro,  and  with  the  utmost  speed  which 
prudence  will  admit,  we  shall  arrive  at  that  exceedingly 
desirable  consummation,  the  utter  extinction  of  Slavery. 

"And  now,  gentlemen,  as  regards  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  you  have  rallied  round  your  ancient  flag,  and  wel- 
comed the  humble  representative  of  those  principles  whose 
emblem  it  is,  I  trust  that  neither  the  lapse  of  time,  nor  the 
seductions  of  prosperity,  can  ever  efface  it  from  my 
memory.  To  my  opponents,  my  acknowledgments  are  due 
for  the  good-humor  and  kindness  with  which  they  have 
received  me;  and  while  I  would  thank  my  friends  for  their 
zealous  and  unwearied  exertions  in  my  favor,  I  briefly  but 
emphatically  assure  them,  that  if  promises  be  an  adequate 
foundation  of  confidence,  or  experience  a  reasonable  ground 
of  calculation,  our  victory  is  sure. 

1 '  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  gentlemen, 

' '  Your  obliged  and  obedient  servant, 

"W.  E.  GLADSTONE." 

The  canvass  was  a  very  vigorous  one,  full  of  hard  work 
and  varied  experiences.  The  young  student  who  had  so 
lately  come  from  the  stately  halls  of  Oxford  was  brought 
into  contact  with  strange  characters,  for  politics  like 
poverty  will  make  a  man  "acquainted  with  strange  bed- 
fellows." "My  Newark  recollections,"  said  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, writing  to  an  old  constituent  of  Newark,  forty  years 
after  the  memorable  election,  "do  not  want  much  revival. 
I  remember  as  if  it  were  yesterday  my  first  arrival  in  the 
place,  at  midnight,  by  the  High  Flyer  Coach  in  September, 
1832,  after  a  journey  of  forty  hours  from  Torquay,  of 
which  we  thought  nothing  in  those  days.  Next  morning  at 
eight  we  sallied  forth  from  the  Clinton  Arms  to  begin  a 
canvass,  on  which  I  now  look  back  as  the  most  exciting 
period  of  my  life.  T  n«ver  worked  harder  or  slept  so  lit- 


52 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 


tie.  We  started  our  canvass  at  eight  in  the  morning  and 
worked  at  it  for  about  nine  hours,  with  a  great  crowd, 
band  and  flags,  and  innumerable  glasses  of  beer  and  wine,  all 
jumbled  together;  then  a  dinner  of  thirty  or  forty,  with 
speeches  and  songs,  until  say  ten  o'clock;  then  we  always 


MB.  GLADSTONE,  M.  P.  FOR  NEWARK. 
MTA.T  23. 


played  a  rubber  of  whist,  and  about  twelve  or  one  I  got 
to  bed,  but  not  to  sleep,  for  never  in  my  life  did  I  undergo 
any  excitement  to  compare  with  it.  There  was  a  public 
house  tour  of  speaking  to  the  Red  Clubs — for  political 
parties  had  their  colors  in  those  days,  the  Tory  colors  of 


MEMBER    OF    PARLIAMENT    FOR    NEWARK.  53 

Newark  being  red — with  which  I  often  had  to  top  up  after 
the  dinner  and  before  the  whist."  Opportunity  will  pre- 
sent itself  later  on  to  deal  more  at  length  with  the  methods 
and  humors  of  those  old  time  elections.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  really  but  a  boy  when  he  fought  his  first  political 
battle,  but  he  fought  it  bravely  and  well.  There  was  a 
custom  called  "heckling,"  common  in  the  elections  of  those 
days,  which  consisted  in  asking  candidates  a  series  of 
questions,  some  of  which  were  wise  and  serious,  and  many 
of  which  were  neither  wise  nor  serious,  but  were  intended 
to  confuse  the  candidate  and  make  him  look  rediculous  in 
the  eyes  of  the  people.  The  fact  that  the  Duke  of  New- 
castle had  what  was  called  "  paramount  influence  "  in  those 
days  in  the  Borough  of  Newark,  and  that  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  in  a  very  real  sense  his  Grace's  nominee,  gave  a  radical 
elector  a  grand  opportunity  of  "heckling"  the  young  can- 
didate. But  as  Mrs.  Glass  says,  ' '  First  catch  your  hare 
then  cook  it. "  Mr.  Gladstone  was  too  wary  to  be  easily 
caught.  The  following  amusing  dialogue  ensued: 

Radical  Elector.  "Are  we  to  understand  you,  then,  as 
the  nominee  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle ?" 

Mr.  Gladstone.  ' '  I  will  answer  that  question  if  you  will 
tell  me  what  you  mean  by  nominee. " 

The  Elector'.  ' '  I  consider  the  man  as  the  nominee  of  the 
Duke  when  he  is  sent  by  his  Grace  to  be  crammed  down 
the  throats  of  the  populace  whether  they  like  it  or  not. " 

Mr.  Gladstone.  "Then,  according  to  that  definition,  I 
am  not  the  nominee  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle. " 

The  Elector.      ' '  What  is  your  definition  of  a  nominee? " 

Mr.  Gladstone.  "I  am  not  here  to  give  the  definition. 
I  asked,  what  you  meant  by  the  word  nominee,  and  accord- 
ing to  your  own  explanation  of  it  I  gave  the  answer. " 

The  crafty  "heckler"  was  silenced,  and  even  the  oppos- 
ing Whigs  could  scarce  forbear  applauding  the  courage  and 
sagacity  of  the  candidate  for  parliamentary  honors. 


54:  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  opposed  by  Mr.  Handley  and  Mr. 
Serjeant  Wilde.  At  the  close  of  the  poll  the  figures  stood 
thus: 

Mr.  W.  E.  Gladstone       -  88% 

Mr.  Handley  -     793 

Mr.  Serjeant  Wilde  719 

The  Tories  were  delighted  beyond  measure.  The  dreaded 
revolt  of  the  nation  was  after  all  only  a  dream.  The  Not- 
tingham Journal  said:  "The  delusion  has  now  vanished 
and  made  room  for  sound  reason  and  reflection.  The  shadow 
satisfies  no  longer,  and  the  return  of  Mr.  Gladstone  has  re- 
stored the  town  of  Newark  to  that  high  rank  which  it  for- 
merly held  in  the  estimation  of  the  friends  of  order  and 
good  government." 


THE  SPEAKER  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS. 


CHAPTER    VII. 

EARLY    SPEECHES    IN   PARLIAMENT. 

4  Ah  God,  for  a  man  with  heart,  head,  hand, 
Like  some  of  the  simple  great  ones  gone 
For  ever  and  ever  by, 
One  still  strong  man  in  a'blatant  land, 
Whatever  they  call  him,  what  care  I — 
Aristocrat,  democrat,  autocrat — one 
Who  can  rule  and  dare  not  lie." 

— Tennyson. 

The  young  member  from  Newark  had  not  begun  at  the 
bottom  of  the  ladder  in  the  matter  of  speech-making  and 
oratory  as  is  generally  the  case  with  young  members  of 
Parliament.  He  had  already  climbed  to  a  most  enviable 
height.  His  experience  and  many  successes  in  connection 
with  the  Oxford  Debating  Union  had  won  for  him  a  wide 
reputation  for  rare  ability  and  eloquence  in  debate.  Old 
Oxonians  who  knew  Mr.  Gladstone  well,  prophesied  that  he 
would  soon  take  his  place  in  the  front  rank,  and  side  by 
side  with  men  who  had  given  the  House  of  Commons  the 
ungrudging  fame  of  being  "the  greatest  deliberative  assem- 
bly in  the  world. "  A  vigorous  opponent  of  Mr.  Gladstone's, 
a  pronounced  Whig,  pays  this  high  tribute  to  his  genius, 
and  foretells  a  brilliant  future: 

"  Yet  on  one  form,  whose  ear  can  ne'er  refuse 
The  Muse's  tribute,  for  he  loved  the  Muse 
(When  the  soul  the  gen'rous  virtues  raise 
A  friendly  Whig  may  chant  a  Tory's  praise), 
Full  many  a  fond  expectant  eye  is  bent 
Where  Newark's  towers  are  mirror'd  in  the  Trent. 
Perchance  ere  long  to  shine  in  senates  first, 
55 


56  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

If  manhood  echo  what  his  youth  rehears'd, 

Soon  Gladstone's  brows  will  bloom  with  greener  bays 

Than  twine  the  chaplet  of  a  minstrel's  lays  ; 

Nor  heed,  while  poring-  o'er  each  graver  line, 

The  far,  faint  music  of  a  lute  like  mine, 

His  was  no  head  contentedly  which  press'd 

The  downy  pillow  in  obedient  rest, 

Where  lazy  pilots,  with  their  canvas  furl'd, 

Set  up  the  Gades  of  their  mental  world ; 

His  was  no  tongue  which  meanly  stoop'd  to  wear 

The  guise  of  virtue,  while  his  heart  was  bare; 

But  all  he  thought  through  ev'ry  action  ran ; 

God's  noblest  work — I've  known  one  honest  man  '' 

Mr.  Gladstone,  just  before  the  opening  of  the  Parliament 
of  1835,  made  a  speech  before  the  Conservative  Club  of 
Nottingham,  which  called  from  the  Conservative  journal  of 
that  ancient  borough  the  following  flattering  eulogium: 

* '  Mr.  Gladstone  is  a  gentleman  of  amiable  manners  and 
the  most  extraordinary  talent;  and  we  venture  to  predict, 
without  the  slightest  exaggeration,  that  he  will  one  day  be 
classed  amongst  the  most  able  statesmen  of  the  British 
Senate. " 

The  prophets  were  thus  early  at  their  tasks,  but  the  bold- 
est of  them  all  was  not  blessed  with  vision  clear  enough  to 
discern  the  lofty  height  to  which  Mr.  Gladstone  was  born 
to  climb.  It  must  not  be  imagined  for  one  moment  that 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  no  enemies.  The  man  who  is  strong 
enough  to  win  a  wide  circle  of  ardent  friends  is  sure  to  have 
a  host  of  bitter  foes.  The  Whig  press  fell  foul  on  this 
young  Tory,  whose  youth  and  brilliance  were  his  chief  sins. 
One  of  these  acrimonious  journals,  the  Reflector — let  us 
hope  it  reflected  itself  chiefly — said: 

"Mr.  Gladstone  is  the  son  of  Gladstone  of  Liverpool,  a 
person  who — we  are  speaking  of  the  father — has  amassed  a 
large  fortune  by  West  India  dealings.  In  other  words,  a  great 
part  of  his  gold  has  sprung  from  the  blood  of  black  slaves. 
Respecting  the  youth  himself — a  person  fresh  from  college, 


EARLY   SPEECHES   IN   PARLIAMENT.  57 

and  whose  mind  is  as  much  like  a  sheet  of  white  foolscap 
as  possible — he  was  utterly  unknown.  He  came  recom- 
mended by  no  claim  in  the  world  except  th#  will  of  the  Duke. 
The  Duke  nodded  unto  Newark,  and  Newark  sent  back  the 
man,  or  rather  the  boy  of  his  choice.  What!  Is  this  to  be, 
now  that  the  Reform  Bill  has  done  its  work?  Are  sixteen 
hundred  men  still  to  bow  down  to  a  wooden-headed  lord,  as 
the  people  of  Egypt  used  to  do  to  their  beasts,  to  their  rep- 
tiles and  their  ropes  of  onions?  There  must  be  something 
wrong — something  imperfect.  What  is  it?  What  is  want- 
ing? Why,  the  ballot!  If  there  be  a  doubt  of  this  (and 
we  believe  there  is  a  doubt,  even  amongst  intelligent 
men),  the  tale  of  Newark  must  set  the  question  at  rest. 
Serjeant  Wilde  was  met  on  his  entry  into  the  town  by  almost 
the  whole  population.  He  was  greeted  everywhere,  cheered 
everywhere.  He  was  received  with  delight  by  his  friends, 
and  with  good  and  earnest  wishes  for  his  success  by  his  nom- 
inal foes.  The  voters  for  Gladstone  went  up  to  that  candi- 
date's booth  (the  slave-driver,  as  they  called  him)  with 
Wilde's  colors.  People  who  had  before  voted  for  Wilde, 
on  being  asked  to  give  their  suffrage,  said,  ' '  We  cannot,  we 
dare  not.  We  have  lost  half  our  business,  and  shall  lose 
the  rest  if  we  go  against  the  Duke.  We  would  do  anything 
in  our  power  for  Serjeant  Wilde,  for  the  cause,  but  we  can- 
not starve!  Now  what  say  you,  our  merry  men,  touching 
the  ballot? " 

The  following  extract  from  one  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  con- 
tributions to  the  Eton  Miscellany,  read  in  the  light  of 
to-day,  awakens  a  smile  at  the  modest  fears  of  the  young 
aspirant  after  literary  fame  : 

"In  my  present  undertaking  there  is  one  gulf  in  which  I 
fear  to  sink,  and  that  gulf  is  Lethe.  There  is  one  stream 
which  I  dread  my  inability  to  stem,  it  is  the  tide  of  popular 
opinion.  I  have  ventured,  and  no  doubt  rashly  ventured — 


5^  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Like  little  wanton  boys  that  swim  on  bladders, 
To  try  my  fortune  in  a  sea  of  glory, 
But  far  beyond  my  depth. 

At  present  it  is  hope  alone  that  buoys  me  up  ;  for  more 
substantial  support  I  must  be  indebted  to  my  own  exertions, 
well  knowing  that  'in  this  land  of  literature  merit  never 
wants  its  reward.  That  such  merit  is  mine  I  dare  not  pre- 
sume to  think  ;  but  still  there  is  something  within  me  that 
bids  me  hope  that  I  may  be  able  to  glide  prosperously  down 
the  stream  of  public  estimation  ;  or,  in  the  words  of  Virgil— 

Celerare  viam  rumore  secundo. 


Little  could  the  writer  of  these  words  imagine — forecast- 
ing the  future  even  by  the  aid  of  youth's  most  ardent 
desires — that  he  would  live  to  fill  the  most  exalted  office  it 
was  in  the  power  of  his  Sovereign  to  bestow  ;  that  he  was 
destined  to  be  regarded  as  an  accomplished  man  of  letters, 
and  that,  all  in  good  time,  he  would  take  rank  as  one  of  the 
greatest  orators  of  his  age.  It  will  not  be  denied  by  those 
who  are  least  disposed  to  idolize  Mr.  Gladstone  that  he  has 
won  a  wider  fame  in  the  forum  and  on  the  platforms  of  the 
nation  than  Cicero  won  in  the  Senate  of  ancient  Rome,  or 
Demosthenes  by  the  sounding,  unquiet  sea.  No  man  is  in  a 
better  position  to  give  an  authoritative  opinion  concerning 
Mr.  Gladstone's  rare  powers  of  oratory,  nor  has  any  man 
given  a  more  careful  and  exhaustive  analysis  of  those  pow- 
ers than  the  brilliant  author  of  ' '  The  History  of  Our  Own 
Times,"  Justin  McCarthy,  M.  P.  We  have  no  apology  to 
offer  for  quoting  at  length  from  the  pages  of  this  distin- 
guished Irish  leader.  He  says  : 

"Mr.  Gladstone's  first  oratorical  qualification  was  his 
exquisite  voice.  Such  a  voice  would  make  commonplace 
seem  interesting  and  lend  something  of  fascination  to  dull- 
ness itself.  It  was  singularly  pure,  clear,  resonant  and 
sweet.  The  orator  never  seemed  to  use  the  slightest  effort 


JOHN  DILLON,  M.  P, 


EARLY    SPEECHES    IN    PARLIAMENT.  59 

or  strain,  in  filling  any  hall  and  reaching  the  ear  of  the 
farthest  among  the  audience.  It  was  not  a  loud  voice  pr  of 
great  volume,  but  strong,  vibrating  and  silvery.  The  words 
were  always  aided  by  energetic  action  and  by  the  deep, 
gleaming  eyes  of  the  orator.  Somebody  once  said  that 
Gladstone  was  the  only  man  in  the  House  who  could  talk  in 
italics.  The  saying  was  odd,  but  was  nevertheless  appro- 
priate and  expressive.  Gladstone  could  by  the  slightest 
modulation  of  his  voice  give  all  the  emphasis  of  italics,  of 
small  print  or  large  print,  or  any  other  effect  he  might 
desire,  to  his  spoken  words.  It  is  not  denied  that  his  won- 
derful gift  of  words  sometimes  led  him  astray.  It  was  often 
such  a  fluency  as  that  of  a  torrent  on  which  the  orator  was 
carried  away. 

' '  He  could  seldom  resist  the  temptation  to  shower  too 
many  words  on  his  subject  and  his  hearers.  Sometimes  he 
involved  his  sentence  in  a  parenthesis  within  parentheses 
until  the  ordinary  listener  began  to  think  extrication  an 
impossibility  ;  but  the  orator  never  failed  to  unravel  all  the 
entanglements  and  to  bring  the  passage  out  to  a  clear  and 
legitimate  conclusion.  There  was  never  any  halt  or  inco- 
herency,  nor  did  the  joints  of  the  sentence  fail  to  fit  together 
in  the  right  way.  Harley  once  described  a  famous  speech 
as  '  a  circumgyration  of  incoherent  words. '  This  description 
certainly  could  not  be  applied  even  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  most 
involved  passages  ;  but  if  some  of  those  were  described  as 
a  circumgyration  of  coherent  words,  the  phrase  might  be 
considered  germane  to  the  matter.  His  style  was  commonly 
too  redundant.  It  seemed  as  if  it  belonged  to  a  certain  school 
of  exuberant  Italian  rhetoric.  Yet  it  was  hardly  to  be  called 
florid.  Gladstone  indulged  in  few  flowers  of  rhetoric,  and 
his  great  gift  was  not  imagination.  His  fault  was  simply  the 
habitual  use  of  too  many  words.  The  defect  was  indeed  a 
characteristic  of  the  Peelite  school  of  eloquence.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone retained  some  of  the  defects  of  the  school  in  which  he 


gO  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

had  been  trained,  even  after  he  had  come  to  surpass  its  great- 
est master.  Often,  however,  this  superb,  exuberant  rush  of 
words  added  indescribable  strength  to  the  eloquence  of  the 
speaker.  In  passages  of  indignant  remonstrance  or  denun- 
ciation, when  word  followed  word  and  stroke  came  down 
upon  stroke,  with  a  wealth  of  resource  that  seemed  inex- 
haustible, the  very  fluency  and  variety  of  the  speaker  over- 
whelmed his  audience.  Interruption  only  gave  him  a  new 
stimulus,  and  appeared  to  supply  him  with  fresh  resources 
of  argument  and  illustration.  His  retorts  leaped  to  his  lips. 
His  eye  caught  sometimes  even  the  mere  gesture  that  indi- 
cated dissent  or  question  ;  and  perhaps  some  unlucky  oppo- 
nent, who  was  only  thinking  of  what  might  be  said  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  great  orator,  found  himself  suddenly  dragged 
into  the  conflict  and  overwhelmed  with  a  torrent  of  remon- 
strance, argument,  and  scornful  words.  Gladstone  had  not 
much  humor  of  the  playful  kind,  but  he  had  a  certain  force 
of  sarcastic  and  scornful  rhetoric.  He  was  always  terribly 
in  earnest.  Whether  the  subject  were  great  or  small,  he 
threw  his  whole  soul  into  it.  Once,  in  addressing  a  school- 

'  O 

boy  gathering,  he  told  his  young  listeners  that  if  a  boy  ran 
he  ought  always  to  run  as  fast  as  he  could  ;  if  he  jumped, 
he  ought  always  to  jump  as  far  as  he  could.  He  illustrated 
his  maxim  in  his  own  career.  He  had  no  idea  apparently 
of  running  or  jumping  in  such  measure  as  happened  to 
please  the  fancy  of  the  moment.  He  always  exercised  his 
splendid  powers  to  their  uttermost  strain. 

"  A  distinguished  critic  once  pronounced  Mr.  Gladstone 
to  be  the  greatest  parliamentary  orator  of  our  time,  on  the 
ground  that  he  had  made  by  far  the  greatest  number  of  fine 
speeches,  while  admitting  that  two  or  three  speeches  had 
been  made  by  other  men  of  the  day  which  might  rank  higher 
than  any  of  his.  This  is,  however,  a  principle  of  criticism 
which  posterity  never  sanctions.  The  greatest  speech,  the 
greatest  poem,  give  the  author  the  highest  place,  though 


SCENE  IN  THE  HOUSE  OF  LORDS. 


THE  LOBBY  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS. 
WAITING  TO  INTKRVIEW  A  MKMBER. 


EARLY    SPEECHES    IN    PARLIAMENT.  61 

the  effort  were  but  single.  Shakespeare  would  rank  beyond 
Messinger  just  as  he  does  now  had  he  written  only  '  The 
Tempest. '  We  can  not  say  how  many  novels,  each  as  good 
as  'Gil  Bias,'  would  make  La  Sage  the  equal  of  Cervan- 
tes. On  this  point  fame  is  inexorable.  We  are  not,  there- 
fore, inclined  to  call  Mr.  Gladstone  the  greatest  English 
orator  of  our  time,  when  we  remember  some  of  the  finest 
speeches  of  Mr.  Bright  ;  but  did  we  regard  parliamentary 
speaking  as  a  mere  instrument  of  parliamentary  business 
and  debate,  then  unquestionably  Mr.  Gladstone  is  not  only 
the  greatest,  but  by  far  the  greatest,  English  orator  of  our 
time  ;  for  he  had  a  richer  combination  of  gifts  than  any 
other  man  we  can  remember,  and  he  could  use  them  oftenest 
with  effect.  He  was  like  a  racer,  which  can  not,  indeed, 
always  go  faster  than  every  rival,  but  can  win  more  races 
in  the  year  than  any  other  horse.  Mr.  Gladstone  could  get 
up  at  any  moment,  and  no  matter  how  many  times  a  night, 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  be  argumentative  or  indig- 
nant, pour  out  a  stream  of  impassioned  eloquence  or  a 
shower  of  figures,  just  as  the  exigency  of  debate  and  the 
moment  required.  He  was  not,  of  course,  always  equal ; 
but  he  was  always  eloquent  and  effective.  He  seemed  as  if 
he  could  not  be  anything  but  eloquent.  Perhaps,  judged  in 
this  way,  he  never  had  an  equal  in  the  English  Parliament. 
Neither  Pitt  nor  Fox  ever  made  so  many  speeches  combining 
so  many  great  qualities.  Chatham  was  a  great  actor  rather 
than  a  great  orator.  Burke  was  the  greatest  political  essayist 
who  ever  addressed  the  House  of  Commons.  Canning  did 
not  often  rise  above  the  level  of  burnished  rhetorical  com- 
monplace. Macaulay,  who  during  his  time  drew  the  most 
crowded  houses  of  any  speaker,  not  even  excepting  Peel, 
was  not  an  orator  in  the  true  sense.  Probably  no  one,  past 
or  present,  had  in  combination  so  many  gifts  of  voice, 
manner,  fluency  and  argument,  style,  reason  and  passion, 
as  Mr.  Gladstone. 


62  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"The  House  of  Commons  was  his  ground.  There  he  was 
himself;  there  he  was  always  seen  to  the  best  advantage. 
As  a  rule  he  was  not  so  successful  on  the  platform.  His 
turn  of  mind  did  not  fit  him  well  for  the  work  of  address- 
ing great  public  meetings.  He  loved  to  look  too  carefully 
at  every  side  of  a  question,  and  did  not  always  go  so 
quickly  to  the  heart  of  it  as  would  suit  great  ^popular 
audiences.  The  principal  defect  of  his  mind  was  probably 
a  lack  of  simplicity,  a  tendency  to  over-refining  and  super- 
subtile  argument.  Not  perhaps  unnaturally,  however, 
when  he  did,  during  some  of  the  later  passages  of  his 
career,  lay  himself  out  for  the  work  of  addressing  popular 
audiences,  he  threw  away  all  discrimination,  and  gave  loose 
to  the  full  force  with  which,  under  the  excitement  of  great 
pressure,  he  was  wont  to  rush  at  a  principle.  There  seemed 
a  certain  lack  of  balance  in  his  mind;  a  want  of  the  exact 
poise  of  all  his  faculties.  Either  he  must  refine  too  much 
or  he  did  not  refine  at  all.  Thus  he  became  accused,  and 
with  some  reason,  of  over-refining  and  all  but  quibbling  in 
some  of  his  parliamentary  arguments ,  of  looking  at  all  sides 
of  a  question  so  carefully  that  it  was  too  long  in  doubt 
whether  he  was  ever  going  to  form  any  opinion  of  his  own; 
and  he  was  sometimes  accused  with  equal  justice  of  plead- 
ing one  side  of  a  political  question  before  great  meetings  of 
his  countrymen  with  all  the  passionate  blindness  of  a  par- 
tisan. The  accusations  might  seem  self-contradictory,  if 
we  did  not  remember  that  they  will  apply,  and  with  great 
force  and  justice,  to  Burke.  Burke  cut  blocks  with  a 
razor,  and  went  on  refining  to  an  impatient  House  of  Com- 
mons, only  eager  for  its  dinner;  and  the  same  Burke  threw 
himself  into  antagonism  to  the  French  Revolution  as  if  he 
were  the  wildest  of  partisans;  as  if  the  question  had  but  one 
side,  and  only  fools  or  villains  could  possibly  say  it  had 
any  other." 

It  was  not  possible  that  the  silver-tongued  orator  of  the 


EARLY    SPEECHES    IN    PARLIAMENT.  63 

Oxford  Debating  Union  could  long  keep  silence.  His  mind 
was  growing  daily  richer  in  that  wealth  of  loving  thought 
that  must  find  utterance.  Gray  in  his  matchless  "Elegy" 
talks  of  "mute,  inglorious  Miltons, "  and  " Cromwells  guilt- 
less of  their  country's  blood. "  But  there  are  other  things 
besides  murder  that  "will  out."  With  such  things  to  say 
as  Mr.  Gladstone  had  accumulated  and  was  constantly 
accumulating,  the  old  order  was  illustrated:  "While  I 
mused  the  fire  burned,  and  at  last  I  spake  with  my  tongue. " 
And  from  the  first  speech  in  Parliament  to  the  last  public 
utterances  of  his  long  and  illustrious  life,  he  commanded  the 
attention  and  admiration  of  his  hearers.  Millions  have 
listened,  spell-bound  by  his  oratory,  and  when  addressing  in 
earnest  controversy  the  ranks  of  those  who  were  his  pro- 
nounced opponents  in  political  life,  he  invariably  commanded 
their  respect  to  such  an  extent  that — 

Even  the  ranks  of  Tuscany  could  scarce  forbear  to  cheer. 

The  first  Parliament  summoned  after  the  passing  of  the 
Reform  Act,  and  known  as  "the  Reform  Parliament,"  met 
on  the  29th  of  January,  1833.  On  the  5th  of  the  following 
month  the  King  attended  and  read  the  speech  from  the 
throne.  The  young  member  for  Newark  took  his  place, 
little  dreaming  that  in  the  years  to  come  he  would  be 
acknowledged  as  one  of  the  master  spirits  of  that  great  deliber- 
ative assembly.  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  the  recognized  leader 
of  the  Tory  minority.  Under  his  banner  Mr.  Gladstone 
Centered  on  the  public  service  of  his  country. 

This  Parliament  was  celebrated  for  two  great  measures  of 
which  England  has  always  had  occasion  to  be  justly  proud. 
The  first  was  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves  in  the  British 
colonies  at  a  cost  of  $100,000,000.  The  second  was  the 
breaking  up  of  the  monopoly  of  the  East  India  Company, 
by  which  the  trade  to  the  East  was  thrown  open  to  all 
merchants.  It  was  in  connection  with  the  first  of  these 


g4  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

great  measures  that  Mr.  Gladstone  delivered  his  maiden 
speech  in  the  British  House  of  Commons.  So  much  has 
been  said  on  this  matter  that  we  deem  it  best  to  present  our 
readers  with  Mr.  Barnett  Smith's  statement  of  this  interest- 
ing episode  as  being  at  once  impartial,  exhaustive  and 
reliable. 

"During  the  debate  on  the  Ministerial  proposition  for 
the  emancipation  of  slaves,  which  was  brought  forward  on 
the  14th  of  May,  1833,  Lord  Ho  wick,  ex-Under-Secretary 
for  the  Colonies,  had  referred  to  an  estate  in  Demerara, 
owned  by  Mr.  Gladstone's  father,  for  the  purpose  of  show- 
ing that  a  great  destruction  of  human  life  had  taken  place 
in  the  West  Indies,  owing  to  the  manner  in  which  the  slaves 
were  worked.  It  was  in  reply  to  this  accusation  that 
Mr.  Gladstone  delivered  his  maiden  speech  on  the  17th  of 
May,  the  occasion  being  the  presentation  of  a  petition  from 
Portarlington  for  the  abolition  of  slavery.  He  challenged 
the  noble  lord's  statement  respecting  the  decrease  of 
seventy-one  slaves  upon  the  estate  of  Vreeden  Hoop,  which 
had  been  attributed  to  the  increased  cultivation  of  sugar. 
The  real  cause  of  the  decrease  lay  in  the  very  large  propor- 
tion of  Africans  upon  the  estate.  When  it  came  into  his 
father's  possession,  it  was  so  weak,  owing  to  the  great  num- 
ber of  Africans  upon  it,  that  he  was  obliged  to  add  two 
hundred  people  to  the  gang.  It  was  notorious  that 
Africans  were  imported  into  Demerara  and  Trinidad  up  to 
a  later  period  than  into  any  other  colony;  and  he  should, 
when  the  proper  time  arrived,  be  able  to  prove  that  the 
decrease  on  Vreeden  Hoop  was  among  the  old  Africans,  and 
that  there  was  an  increase  going  on  in  the  Creole  popula- 
tion, which  would  be  a  sufficient  answer  to  the  statement  of 
the  noble  lord.  The  quantity  of  sugar  produced  was  small 
in  proportion  to  that  produced  on  many  other  estates.  The 
cultivation  of  cotton  in  Demerara  had  been  abandoned,  and 
that  of  coffee  much  diminished,  and  the  people  employed  in 


MB.  GLADSTONE  DELIVERIN&  His  MAIDEN  SPEECH  IN  PARLIAMENT. 


EARLY    SPEECHES    IN    PARLIAMENT.  65 

these  sources  of  production  had  been  transferred  to  the  cul- 
tivation of  sugar.  Demerara,  too,  was  peculiarly  circum- 
stanced, and  the  labor  of  the  same  number  of  negroes,  dis- 
tributed over  the  year,  would  produce  in  that  colony  a 
given  quantity  of  sugar,  with  less  injury  to  the  people,  than 
negroes  could  produce  in  other  colonies,  working  only  at 
the  stated  periods  of  crop.  *  He  was  ready  to  admit  that 
this  cultivation  was  of  a  more  severe  character  than  others; 
and  he  would  ask,  were  there  not  certain  employments  in 
this  and  other  countries  more  destructive  to  life  than 
others?  He  would  only  instance  those  of  painting  and 
working  in  lead  mines,  both  of  which  were  well  known  to 
have  that  tendency.  The  noble  lord  attempted  to  impugn 
the  character  of  the  gentleman  acting  as  manager  of  his 
father's  estates;  and  in  making  this  selection  he  had  cer- 
tainly been  most  unfortunate;  for  there  was  not  an 
individual  in  the  colony  more  proverbial  for  humanity,  and 
the  kind  treatment  of  his  slaves  than  Mr.  Maclean. '  Mr. 
Gladstone,  in  concluding  his  warm  defense  of  his  relative, 
said  he  held  in  his  hand  two  letters  from  the  agent,  in 
which  that  gentleman  spoke  in  the  kindest  terms  of  the  peo- 
ple under  his  charge;  described  their  state  of  happiness, 
content  and  healthiness — their  good  conduct  and  the 
infrequency  of  severe  punishment — and  recommended  cer- 
tain additional  comforts,  which  he  said  the  slaves  well 
deserved. 

"On  the  3rd  of  June,  on  the  resumption  of  the  debate  on 
the  abolition  of  slavery,  Mr.  Gladstone  again  addressed  the 
House.  He  now  entered  more  fully  into  the  charges  which 
Lord  Howick  had  brought  against  the  management  of  his 
father's  estates  in  Demerara,  and  showed  their  groundless- 
ness. When  he  had  discussed  the  existing  aspect  of  slavery 
in  Trinidad,  Jamaica,  and  other  places,  he  proceeded  to 
deal  with  the  general  question.  He  confessed,  with  shame 
and  pain,  that  cases  of  wanton  cruelty  had  occurred  in  the 


gg  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Colonies,  but  added  that  they  would  always  exist,  particu- 
larly under  the  system  of  slavery;  and  this  was  unquestion- 
ably a  substantial  reason  why  the  British  Legislature  and 
public  should  set  themselves  in  good  earnest  to  provide  for 
its  extinction;  but  he  maintained  that  these  instances  of 
cruelty  could  easily  be  explained  by  the  West  Indians,  who 
represented  them  as  rare  and  isolated  cases,  and  who  main- 
tained that  the  ordinary  relation  of  master  and  slave  was 
one  of  kindliness  and  not  of  hostility.  He  deprecated 
cruelty,  and  he  deprecated  slavery,  both  of  which  were 
abhorrent  to  the  nature  of  Englishmen;  but,  conceding 
these  things,  he  asked,  '  Were  not  Englishmen  to  retain  a 
right  to  their  owrn  honestly  and  legally  acquired  property? ' 
But  the  cruelty  did  not  exist,  and  he  saw  no  reason  for  the 
attack  which  had  recently  been  made  upon  the  West  India 
interest.  He  hoped  the  house  would  make  a  point  to  adopt 
the  principle  of  compensation,  and  to  stimulate  the  slave  to 
genuine  and  spontaneous  industry.  If  this  were  done,  and 
moral  instruction  were  not  imparted  to  the  slaves,  liberty 
would  prove  a  curse  instead  of  a  blessing  to  them.  Touch- 
ing upon  the  property  question,  and  the  proposed 
plans  for  emancipation,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  that  the 
house  might  consume  its  time  and  exert  its  wisdom  in 
devising  these  plans,  but  without  the  concurrence  of  the 
Colonial  Legislatures  success  would  be  hopeless.  He 
thought  there  was  excessive  wickedness  in  any  violent  inter- 
ference under  the  present  circumstances.  They  w^ere  still 
in  the  midst  of  unconcluded  inquiries,  and  to  pursue  the 
measure  then  under  discussion,  at  that  moment,  was  to  com- 
mit an  act  of  great  and  unnecessary  hostility  toward  the 
island  of  Jamaica.  'It  was  the  duty  of  the  House  to 
place  as  broad  a  distinction  as  possible  between  the  idle  and 
the  industrious  slaves,  and  nothing  could  be1  too  strong  to 
secure  the  freedom  of  the  latter;  but,  with  respect  to  the 
idle  slaves,  no  period  of  emancipation  could  hasten  their 


EARLY    SPEECHES    IN    PARLIAMENT.  67 

improvement.  If  the  labors  of  the  House  should  be  con- 
ducted to  a  satisfactory  issue,  it  would  redound  to  the  honor 
of  the  nation  and  to  the  reputation  of  his  Majesty's  Minis- 
ters, whilst  it  would  be  delightful  to  the  West  India  plant- 
ers themselves — for  they  must  feel  that  to  hold  in  bondage 
their  fellow-men  must  always  involve  the  greatest  responsi- 
bility. But  let  not  any  man  think  of  carrying  this  measure 
by  force.  England  rested  her  power  not  upon  physical  force, 
but  upon  her  principles,  her  intellect,  and  virtue;  and  if 
this  great  measure  were  not  placed  on  a  fair  basis,  or  were 
conducted  by  violence,  he  should  lament  it  as  a  signal  for 
the  ruin  of  the  Colonies,  and  the  downfall  of  the  Empire.' 
The  attitude  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  as  borne  out  by  the  tenor 
of  his  speech,  was  not  one  of  hostility  to  Emancipation, 
though  he  was  undoubtedly  unfavorable  to  an  immediate 
and  an  indiscriminate  enfranchisement.  He  demanded  more- 
over, that  the  interests  of  the  planters  should  be  duly 
regarded. " 

The  abolition  of  Colonial  Slavery  was  decreed.  The  sum 
of  $100,000,000  was  voted  to  the  slave-owners  as  compen- 
sation for  their  losses.  The  blot  of  slavery  was  wiped  from 
the  fair  escutcheon  of  England.  William  Wilberforce  and 
his  brave  and  untiring  comrades  saw  with  boundless  joy 
the  success  of  their  labors  in  the  cause  of  freedom.  No 
slave  could  now  breathe  where  the  flag  of  England  waved. 


CHAPTER  VHI. 

EARLY   SPEECHES   IN    PARLIAMENT — CONTINUED. 

When  he  speaks, 

The  air,  a  chartered  libertine,  is  still 
And  the  mute  wonder  lurketh  in  men's  ears 
To  steal  his  sweet  and  honey'd  sentences. 

— William  STuikespeare. 

Whatever  strengthens  our  local  attachments  is  favorable  both  to 
individual  and  nationa^  character.  Our  home,  our  birth-place,  our 
native  land — think  for  a  while  what  the  virtues  are  that  arise  out  of 
the  feelings  connected  with  these  words,  and  if  you  have  any  intel- 
lectual eyes  you  will  then  perceive  the  connection  between  topog- 
raphy and  patriotism.  Show  me  a  man  who  cares  no  more  for  one 
place  than  another  and  I  will  show  you  in  that  same  person  one  who 
loves  nothing  but  himself. — Robert  Southey. 

It  is  exceedingly  interesting  to  note  that  Mr.  Gladstone's 
earliest  speeches  in  Parliament  were  in  the  main  devoted  to 
the  advocacy  of  principles  and  institutions  that  in  his  riper 
age  he  was  destined  to  controvert  and  overthrow.  Take 
two  examples — the  Irish  church  question  and  the  question 
of  the  special  disadvantages  under  which  all  those  who  were 
not  churchmen  or  Episcopalians  labored  in  respect  to  the 
Universities. 

On  the  8th  of  July,  1834,  a  debate  took  place  on  Lord 
Althorp's  Church  Temporalities  (Ireland)  Bill.  On  the  ques- 
tion that  this  bill  should  pass,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  he  would 
not  shelter  himself  under  a  silent  vote.  Silent  voting  was 
never  a  habit  with  Mr.  Gladstone,  especially  if  such  voting 
could  be  in  any  way  misconstrued.  He  was  prepared  to 
defend  the  Irish  Church,  and  if  it  had  abuses,  which  he  did  not 
now  deny,  those  abuses  were  to  be  ascribed  to  the  ancestors 
and  predecessors  of  those  who  then  surrounded  him.  He 

68 


EARLY    SPEECHES   IN    PARLIAMENT.  69 

admitted  that  the  Irish  Church  had  slumbered.  He  feared 
that  the  effect  of  the  bill  would  be  to  place  the  Church  on 
an  untenable  foundation.  He  was  unwilling  to  see  the 
number  of  Irish  bishops  reduced.  He  had  always  regarded 
it  as  a  well-established  principle  that  as  long  as  a  Church 
was  national  the  State  ought  to  be  taxed  to  support  it ;  and 
if  the  Government  meant  to  maintain  the  Protestant  Church 
in  Ireland  they  ought  to  enforce  this  maxim  ;  but  it  was 
not  the  proper  way  to  establish  or  maintain  the  Church  to 
proceed  by  laying  further  burdens  on  the  body  of  the 
clergy,  who,  God  knows,  were  already  not  overbur- 
thened  with  money — as  was  done  by  that  measure.  He  had 
little  doubt  the  Government  would  carry  the  bill  by  a  large 
majority,  and  if  they  did,  he  could  only  hope  that  it  would 
produce  the  effects  which  they  had  ascribed  to  it — namely, 
of  securing  and  propping  up  the  Irish  Protestant  Church. 
The  bill  was  carried  by  274  votes  to  94,  Mr.  Gladstone's 
name  appearing  in  the  minority. 

Thirty  years  pass  by  and  the  question  of  the  Irish  Church 
is  once  more  before  the  House  of  Commons.  Mr.  Dillwyn 
proposed  in  March,  1865:  "That  the  present  position  of 
the  Irish  Church  is  unsatisfactory,  and  calls  for  the  early 
attention  of  Her  Majesty's  Government."  While  declining 
to  vote  for  this  motion,  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not  a 
matter  to  which  the  Government  could  give  its  "early" 
attention,  Mr.  Gladstone  declared  that  the  abstract  truth  of 
the  former  part  of  the  resolution  could  not  be  denied.  He 
could  come  to  no  other  conclusion,  he  said,  than  that  the 
Irish  Church,  as  she  then  stood,  was  in  a  false  position.  This 
was  Mr.  Gladstone's  first  formal  utterance  in  Parliament 
against  the  Irish  establishment.  A  few  years  later  he 
entered  upon  that  memorable  conflict  which  resulted  in  the 
disestablishment  and  disendowment  of  the  Irish  Church. 
In  this  great  conflict  the  present  writer  rendered  enthusi- 
astic service  as  a  follower  in  the  ranks  of  the  great  champion 


70  LIFE    OF 

of  religious  equality  and  freedom.  Later  on  attention  will 
be  called  to  some  interesting  reminiscences  of  that  stirring 
period. 

In  this  same  Parliament  of  1834  Mr.  Hume  presented  to 
the  House  of  Commons  the  Universities  Admission  Bill, 
whose  aim  was  to  throw  the  doors  of  the  Universities  open 
to  all  applicants,  wholly  irrespective  of  their  religious 
opinions  or  creeds.  The  specific  purpose  of  the  Bill  was  to 
remove  the  necessity  of  subscription  to  the  Thirty-nine  Arti- 
cles of  the  Church  of  England,  as  an  essential  condition  of 
entrance.  Mr.  Gladstone's  contention  was,  that  although 
the  measure  proposed  to  alter  materially  the  constitution  of 
the  Universities,  it  would  be  practically  inoperative.  Yet 
the  Bill,  while  not  working  out  its  professed  objects,  would, 
nevertheless,  inevitably  lead  to  great  dissension  and  confu- 
sion, and  eventually  to  endless  applications  and  legislation 
in  the  House.  It  was  said  of  the  ancient  Romans  that 

they— 

Made  a  solitude  and  called  it  peace. 

He  very  much  feared  that  the  House,  in  establishing 
their  present  principle  of  religious  liberty,  would  drive 
from  their  functions  men  who  had  long  done  honor  and 
service  to  their  country,  and  thus  inaugurate  their  reign  of 
religious  peace  by  an  act  of  the  grossest  tyranny.  Not- 
withstanding Mr.  Gladstone's  opposition,  the  tide  in  favor 
of  the  motion  rolled  on,  and  when  it  came  to  a  vote  the  Bill 
was  carried  by  a  majority  of  89 — 164  voting  for  the  bill  and 
75  against.  Rather  a  handsome  and  suggestive  majority 
this,  showing  most  surely  that  the  day  of  a  broader  liberal 
spirit  was  already  dawning.  This  was  the  year  1834.  A 
whole  generation  passes  away  ;  Mr.  Gladstone  is  at  the  helm 
of  the  state.  "The  golden  age  of  Liberalism,"  as  it  was 
proudly  called,  was  in  its  full-orbed  splendor.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, who  in  those  early  Newark  days — as  we  have  just 
seen — stood  in  terror  of  any  radical  movement,  in  respect 


fr     ! 


i;i 

JLllite>:SE 


EARLY    SPEECHES    IN    PARLIAMENT.  71 

of  University  reform,  is  now  the  champion  of  a  wide-open 
University.  Under  his  guidance  a  Bill  receives  the  Royal 
assent,  the  chief  feature  of  which  is  :  "  That  all  lay  stu- 
dents, of  whatever  religious  creed,  shall  in  future  be 
admitted  to  the  universities  on  equal  terms." 

In  the  middle  of  October  the  King  summarily  dismissed 
the  Melbourne  ministry.  Lord  Althorp  had  been  trans- 
ferred to  the  House  of  Lords.  This  gave  the  King  his 
opportunity.  He  objected  to  the  reconstruction  of  the 
Cabinet.  He  caused  a  letter  to  be  sent  to  the  venerable 
Duke  of  Wellington,  who  very  warmly  recommended  Sir 
Robert  as  the  most  suitable  man  to  be  at  the  head  of  the* 
government.  Sir  Robert,  who  wTas  then  traveling  in  Italy, 
returned  to  London,  and  on  the  9th  of  December,  1834,. 
accepted  the  King's  commands  to  form  a  Ministry. 

On  the  24th  of  December — Christmas  Eve  of  1834 — Mr; 
Gladstone  was  tendered  the  official  position  of  Junior  Lord 
of  the  Treasury  under  Sir  Robert  Peel.  He  was  now 
twenty-five  years  of  age.  This  was  the  first  round  of  the 
official  ladder,  to  whose  sunniest  height  he  was  destined  to 
climb,  making  each  step  in  his  upward  career  increasingly 
illustrious. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE    YOUNG    MINISTER   OF    STATE. 

He  who  ascends  to  mountain  tops  shall  find 

The  loftiest  peaks  most  wrapped  in  cloud  and  snow ; 

He  who  surpasses  or  subdues  mankind, 
Must  look  down  on  the  hate  of  those  below. 

— Lord  Byron. 

Greatness  lies  not  in  being  strong1,  but  in  the  right  using  of 
strength;  and  strength  is  not  used  rightly  when  it  only  serves  to 
carry  a  man  above  his  fellows  for  his  own  solitary  glory.  He  is 
greatest  whose  strength  carries  up  the  most  hearts  by  the  attraction 
of  his  own.— Henry  Ward  Beecher. 

As  we  saw  in  the  previous  chapter,  Mr.  Gladstone  found 
himself  on  his  twenty-first  birthday,  and  in  his  first  year  of 
Parliamentary  service,  started  on  his  official  career.  The 
golden  honors  that  some  men  strive  half  a  lifetime  to  win, 
and  strive  in  vain,  came  to  him  in  the  morning  of  his  days, 
unwooed  and  uninvited.  It  was  a  case  of  aptitude  shaping 
destiny.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  "born  great,"  nor  can  it 
be  said  that  he  had  ' '  greatness  thrust  upon  him. "  Great- 
ness came  to  him  in  the  natural  order  of  things.  The 
judicious  use  of  the  one  talent  made  it  inevitable  that  he 
should  be  entrusted  with  increasing  power  and  responsi- 
bility. He  was  not  the  happy  favorite  of  lucky  stars,  and 
yet,  as  has  been  most  wisely  said,  "Rarely  has  a  great 
man  at  the  outset  of  his  career  had  fewer  difficulties  to  over- 
come, or  been  more  splendidly  helped  by  favoring  circum- 
stances. The  son  of  a  rich  and  influential  father,  every 
advantage  that  wealth,  education  and  position  could  give 
was  his;  and  from  the  first,  even  from  his  Eton  days,  it 
seems  to  have  been  accepted  by  those  who  surrounded  him 
that  he  was  one  whom  destiny  had  marked  out  for  a  great 


THE   YOUNG   MINISTER   OF    STATE.  73 

position.  He  was  welcomed  into  public  life,  welcomed  into 
office,  and  while  he  was  still  but  a  youthful  Under-Secre- 
tary,  ecclesiastics  were  writing  to  him  assuring  him  that  the 
Premiership  awaited  him,  and  advising  him  to  prepare 
himself  with  that  goal  in  view."  The  world-renowned 
Samuel  Wilberforce,  Bishop  of  Oxford,  one  of  the  most 
eloquent  divines  that  ever  sat  upon  an  Episcopal  throne, 
wrote  to  Gladstone  in  these  early  days  and  said  :  * '  There 
is  no  height  to  which  you  may  not  fairly  rise.  If  it  pleases 
God  to  spare  us  violent  convulsions  and  the  loss  of  our 
liberties,  you  may  at  some  future  day  wield  the  whole  gov- 
ernment of  this  lad.  Act  now  with  a  view  to  then. " 

It  was  a  great  Parliament,  this  first  Parliament  of  the 
Reform  era,  the  Parliament  that  welcomed  the  youthful 
and  brilliant  Gladstone  to  its  debates. 

The  Duke  of  Wellington,  conqueror  of  Napoleon,  not  a 
statesman,  but  an  honest  patriot,  was  there.  Lord 
Brougham,  Lord  Lyndhurst,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and  that 
greatest  Irishman  of  his  age,  Daniel  O'Connell,  were  there. 
Giants  of  oratory  were  Peel  and  O'Connell.  It  is  said 
nobody  in  modern  times  ever  swayed  the  House  of  Com- 
mons by  argument  and  eloquence  as  did  Sir  Robert  Peel  for 
many  years.  Both  Peel  and  O'Connell  possessed  magnifi- 
cent voices,  a  characteristic  contributing  to  the  forensic 
power  of  the  man  who  was  to  succeed  them.  Another 
leader  of  the  new  Parliament  was  Lord  John  Russell,  fore- 
most in  enacting  the  law  that  had  created  it.  Lord  Derby, 
Macaulay,  Grote,  the  historian,  and  Bulwer,  the  novelist, 
were  there.  Disraeli  had  not  yet  come  to  astonish  the 
House  with  his  florid  fancies  and  satiric  rhetoric,  and  Palm- 
erston  was  to  be  conspicuous  later.  Earl  Grey  was  Prime 
Minister.  Lord  Althorp  led  the  Liberal  majority  in  the 
House,  Peel  was  the  head  of  the  Tory  minority. 

Before  any  member  of  the  English  House  of  Commons 
can  exercise  the  functions  of  any  office  to  which  he  has  been 


74-  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

summoned  by  the  Prime  Minister  he  must  first  appeal  to 
his  constituents  for  their  endorsement.  He  is  the  repre- 
sentative of  his  constituents,  and  their  endorsement  or 
objection  is  made  manifest  in  the  election  or  non-election  of 
the  candidate.  On  the  24th  of  December,  1834,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone issued  his  address  to  his  constituents  at  Newark.  The 
warmest  adherents  of  the  outgoing  Parliament  had  become 
incensed  by  what  they  regarded  as  a  tendency  towards 
rash,  violent,  and  menacing  innovation.  Mr.  Gladstone 
said  there  were  even  "those  among  the  servants  of  the 
King  who  did  not  scruple  to  solicit  the  suffrages  of  their 
constituents,  with  promises  to  act  on  the  principles  of  Radi- 
calism." He  further  went  on  to  say  in  his  own  inimitable 
style  :  "The  question  has  then,  as  it  appears  to  me,  become, 
whether  we  are  to  hurry  onward  at  intervals,  but  not  long 
ones,  through  the  medium  of  the  ballot,  short  parliaments, 
and  other  questions  called  popular,  into  republicanism  or 
anarchy ;  or  whether,  independently  of  all  party  distinc- 
tions, the  people  will  support  the  Crown  in  the  discharge  of 
its  duty  to  maintain  in  efficiency,  and  transmit  in  safety, 
those  old  and  valuable  institutions  under  which  our  country 
has  greatly  flourished."  In  the  last  paragraph  of  this 
address,  however,  the  writer  said,  "Let  me  add  shortly, 
but  emphatically,  concerning  the  reform  of  actual  abuses, 
whether  in  Church  or  State,  that  I  regard  it  as  a  sacred 
duty— a  duty  at  all  times,  and  certainly  not  least  at  a  period 
like  this,  when  the  danger  of  neglecting  it  is  most  clear  and 
imminent — a  duty  not  inimical  to  true  and  determined  Con- 
servative principle,  nor  a  curtailment  or  modification  of 
such  principle,  but  its  legitimate  consequences,  or  rather  an 
actual  element  of  its  composition." 

If  Mr.  Gladstone's  address  met  the  approval  of  the 
thoughtful  and  patriotic,  his  speech  from  the  hustings  kin- 
dled that  approval  into  enthusiasm.  The  plaudits  were  long 
and  loud  and  most  persuasive.  The  waverers  became  con- 


SIB  ROBERT  PEEL. 


THE    YOUNG   MINISTER   OF   STATE.  75 

vinced,  Mr.  Gladstone  was  triumphantly  re-elected  for  the 
ancient  borough  of  Newark.  In  those  noisy  demonstrative 
days  it  was  customary  to  ' '  chair  "  the  successful  candidates. 
A  beautiful  arm-chair  was  provided  in  which  the  triumph- 
ant Member  of  Parliament  was  placed,  and  then  chair  and 
occupant  were  hoisted  on  the  shoulders  of  sturdy  men,  a 
procession  was  then  formed,  and  the  hero  of  the  day  was 
borne  along  to  the  great  edification  and  delight  of  the  party 
on  whose  banner  victory  sat  enthroned.  But  Mr.  Glad- 
stones "chairing"  took  on  a  more  elaborate  form.  The 
chair,  which  was  one  of  exceptionally  fine  workmanship, 
attracted  general  admiration  ;  it  was  placed  on  a  ground- 
work laid  upon  the  springs  of  a  four-wheel  carriage,  and 
drawn  by  six  beautiful  grey  horses,  the  riders  dressed  in 
silk  jackets.  As  the  procession  wended  its  way  through 
the  streets  the  inhabitants  were  most  peaceably  inclined. 
"Never  before  did  the  town  of  Newark  present  so  pleasing 
and  so  glorious  a  sight !"  said  a  local  journal  of  the  time. 
The  "red"  lion  and  the  "blue"  lamb — for  the  political 
parties  had  their  colors  as  well  as  their  names — lay  down 
together  (the  colors  of  the  quadrupeds  may  be  reversed  at 
pleasure),  and  all  was  harmony,  and  all  was  peace.  Alight- 
ing at  his  committee  room,  Mr.  Gladstone  delivered  an 
address  of  thanks  to  upwards  of  6,000  persons,  his  speech 
being  greeted  with  deafening  cheers. 

Parliament  assembled  in  February,  1835.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  promoted  to  the  office  of  Under  Secretary  for  the 
Colonies.  In  a  pleasant  page  of  biographical  reminiscence 
Mr.  Gladstone  details  an  interview  with  his  Chief,  which  is 
exceedingly  interesting  and  reveals  the  innate  modesty  of 
the  young  minister  : 

"On  an  evening  in  the  month  of  January,  1835,  I  was 
sent  for  by  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and  received  from  him  the 
offer,  which  I  accepted,  of  the  Under  Secretaryship  of  the 
Colonies.  From  him  I  went  to  Lord  Aberdeen,  who  was 


7»;  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

thus  to  be,  in  official  home-talk,  my  master.  I  may  confess 
that  I  went  in  fear  and  trembling.  I  knew  Lord  Aberdeen 
only  by  public  rumor.  Distinction  of  itself,  naturally  and 
properly,  rather  alarms  the  young.  I  had  heard  of  his  high 
character  ;  but  I  had  also  heard  of  him  as  a  man  of  cold 
manners,  close  and  even  haughty  reserve.  It  was  dark 
when  I  entered  his  room— the  one  on  the  first  floor  with  the 
bay  window  looking  to  the  parlor — so  that  I  could  see  his 
figure  rather  than  his  countenance.  I  do  not  recollect  the 
matter  of  the  conversation,  but  I  Avell  remember  that  before 
I  had  been  three  minutes  with  him  all  my  apprehension  had 
melted  away  like  snow  in  the  sun.  I  came  away  from  that 
interview  conscious — indeed,  as  who  could  fail  to  be  con- 
scious ? — of  his  dignity,  but  of  a  dignity  so  tempered  by  a 
peculiar  purity  and  gentleness,  and  so  associated  with 
impressions  of  his  kindness,  and  even  friendship,  that  I 
believe  I  felt  more  about  the  wonder  of  his  being  misunder- 
stood by  the  outer  world  than  about  the  duties  and  respon- 
sibilities of  my  new  office." 

On  the  30th  of  March,  1835,  Lord  John  Russell  intro- 
duced a  resolution  concerning  the  Irish  Church,  in  the  fol- 
lowing terms  : 

"That  the  House  should  resolve  itself  into  a  committee  of 
the  whole  to  consider  of  the  Temporalities  of  the  Church  of 
Ireland." 

Tho  resolution  was  met  with  the  most  determined  oppo- 
sition. In  the  course  of  the  discussion,  Mr.  Gladstone  said 
the  result  of  the  motion  would  be  first  to  enfeeble  and 
debase,  and  then  altogether  overthrow,  the  principle  on 
which  the  church  establishment  rested.  The  noble  lord 
invited  them  to  invade  the  property  of  the  church  in  Ire- 
land. The  system  they  were  now  called  upon  to  agree  to 
was  in  its  essence  transitory,  and  yet  it  involved  the  existence 
of  all  church  establishments.  If  the  separation  of  church 
and  state  was  hastening  on,  the  present  motion,  instead  of 


THE    YOUNG    MINISTER   OF    STATE.  77 

retarding  it,  would  increase  its  rapidity.  If  in  the  admin- 
istration of  this  great  country  the  elements  of  religion  should 
not  enter — if  those  who  were  called  upon  to  guide  it  in  its 
career  should  be  forced  to  listen  to  the  caprices  and  to  the 
whims  of  every  body  of  visionaries,  they  would  lose  that 
station  all  great  men  were  hitherto  proud  of.  He  hoped 
that  he  should  never  live  to  see  the  day  when  any  principle 
leading  to  such  a  result  would  be  adopted  in  this  country. 

On  a  division  ministers  were  defeated,  the  numbers  being: 
For  Lord  John  Russell's  motion,  322  ;  against,  289.  The 
Irish  Church  bill  was  subsequently  discussed  in  committee, 
when  ministers  were  again  defeated  on  the  question  of 
appropriating  the  surplus  funds  of  the  church  to  the  general 
education  of  all  classes  of  Christians.  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
seeing  that  he  and  his  government  had  no  possibility  of  con- 
ducting the  affairs  of  the  country  with  the  substantial  sup- 
port of  the  House,  announced  his  resignation.  Lord  Mel- 
bourne again  became  Prime  Minister.  Mr.  Gladstone,  of 
course,  stepped  down  from  the  office  of  Under  Secretary  of 
the  Colonial  Department,  and  retired  with  his  chief  into  the 
quiet  shades  of  opposition.  The  life  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons was  a  life  of  strife  and  bitter  contention.  From  this 
Mr.  Gladstone  kept  as  much  as  possible  aloof.  For  great 
principles  he  was  always  ready  to  fight,  but  when  the  con- 
flict was  merely  between  persons  and  parties  he  refused  to 
enter  the  lists,  and  by  the  courtesy  and  urbanity  of  his 
manners  he  won  the  admiration  of  the  whole  House. 

An  admirer  and  fellow-member  of  Parliament  with  Mr. 
Gladstone  in  these  early  years,  thus  speaks  of  him  :  "  He 
spoke  frequently  in  debates,  and  the  growth  of  his  position 
in  the  country  is  testified  to  by  the  fact  that  in  1837,  being 
in  his  twenty-eighth  year,  he  was  invited  to  stand  as  the 
Tory  candidate  for  Manchester.  He  declined  the  proposal, 
but  was  nevertheless  run,  and  polled  a  considerable  Dumber 
of  votes.  It  was  at  this  period  of  his  career  that  Lord 


78  LIFE    OF   GLADSTONE. 

Macaulay  described  him  in  a  famous  sentence  as  "  a  young 
man  of  unblemished  character,  and  of  distinguished  Parlia- 
mentary talents,  the  rising  hope  of  those  stern  and  unbend- 
ing Tories  who  follow  reluctantly  and  mutinously  a  leader 
whose  experience  and  eloquence  are  indispensable  to  them, 
but  whose  cautious  temper  and  moderate  opinions  they 
abhor." 


CHAPTER  X. 

ACCESSION  AND  CORONATION  OF  QUEEN  VICTORIA. 

This  awful  responsibility  is  imposed  upon  me  so  suddenly,  and  at 
so  early  a  period  of  my  life,  that  I  should  feel  myself  utterly  oppressed 
by  the  burden  were  I  not  sustained  by  the  hope  that  Divine  Providence 
which  has  called  me  to  this  work  will  give  me  strength  for  the  per- 
formance of  it.  — Queen  Victoria. 

Perhaps  our  youthful  Queen 

Remembers  what  has  been — 
Her  childhood's  rest  by  loving  heart, 

And  sport  on  grassy  sod  — 

Alas!  can  others  wear 

A  mother's  heart  for  her  ? 
But  calm  she  lifts  her  trusting  face 

And  calleth  upon  God. 

Yea!  call  on  God,  thou  maiden, 

Of  spirit  nobly  laden, 
And  leave  such  happy  days  behind. 

For  happy-making  years 

A  nation  looks  to  thee 

For  steadfast  sympathy. 
Make  room  within  thy  bright  clear  eyes, 

For  all  its  gathered  tears. 

And  so  the  grateful  isles 

Shall  give  thee  back  their  smiles, 
And  as  thy  mother  joys  in  thee, 

In  them  shalt  tliou  rejoice; 

Rejoice  to  meekly  bow 

A  somewhat  paler  brow, 
While  the  King  of  Kings  shall  bless  thee 

By  the  British  people's  voice. 

— Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning. 

The  days  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  public  service  ran  parallel 
with  the  days  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria.  For  sixty 
years  that  illustrious  lady  has  swayed  the  sceptre  of  empire, 
and  for  more  than  sixty  years  Mr.  Gladstone  served  with 

79 


80  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

matchless  power  and  rare  fidelity  his  God,  his  country,  and 
his  queen.  The  historian  of  the  future  will  find  this 
prolonged  reign  of  so  distinct  a  character  that  he  will  in  all 
probability  accept  the  designation  already  given  it;  'he  will 
describe  the  reign  of  Victoria  as  the  "Victorian  age." 
Ardent  admirers  of  Mr.  Gladstone  have  not  hesitated  to 
describe  him  as  the  greatest  moral  force  in  the  statesmanship 
of  that  eventful  e'ra.  It  seems  to  us  appropriate  that  at 
this  point  a  few  pages  should  be  devoted  to  a  record  of  the 
accession  and  coronation  of  the  youthful  queen.  The  dawn 
of  that  fair  June  morning  in  1837,  was  the  dawn  of  the 
most  glorious  reign  England  has  ever  seen  or  is  ever  likely 
to  see.  In  this  fair  land  we  have  neither  monarch  nor 
throne.  But  if  there  must  be  monarchs,  well  then  the  land 
that  boasts  such  a  queen  as  Victoria  and  such  statesmen  as 
Gladstone  has  everything  to  hope  for,  and  nothing  to  fear. 
Around  the  accession  and  coronation  of  the  queen,  romance 
of  the  most  sacred  order  has  woven  its  delightful  traceries. 
There  is  a  pretty  description  which  has  been  often  quoted, 
given  by  Miss  Wynn,  of  the  manner  in  which  the  young 
sovereign  received  the  news  of  her  accession  to  a  throne. 
The  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  Dr.  Howley,  and  the  Lord 
Chamberlain,  the  Marquis  of  Conyngham,  left  Windsor  for 
Kensington  Palace,  where  the  Princess  Victoria  had  been 
residing,  to  inform  her  of  the  King's  death.  It  was  two 
hours'  after  midnight  when  they  started,  and  they  did  not 
reach  Kensington  until  five  o'clock  in  the  morning.  ' '  They 
knocked,  they  rang,  they  thumped  for  a  considerable  time 
before  they  could  rouse  the  porter  at  the  gate;  they  were 
again  kept  waiting  in  the  court  yard,  then  turned  Jnto  one 
of  the  lower  rooms,  where  they  seemed  forgotten  by  every- 
body. They  rang  the  bell,  and  desired  that  the  attendant  of 
the  Princess  Victoria  might  be  sent  to  inform  her  Eoyal 
Highness  that  they  requested  an  audience  on  business  of 
importance.  After  another  delay,  and  another  ringing  to 


SCENE  IN  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS. 


ACCESSION    AND    CORONATION    OF    QUEEN    VICTORIA.        81 

inquire  the  cause,  the  attendant  was  summoned,  who  stated 
that  the  Princess  was  in  such  a  sweet  sleep  that  she  could 
not  venture  to  disturb  her.  Then  they  said  '  We  are  come 
on  business  of  state  to  the  Queen, .  and  even  her  sleep  must 
give  way  to  that.'  It  did;  and  to  prove  that  she  did  not 
keep  them  waiting,  in  a  few  minutes  she  came  into  the  room 
in  a  loose  white  nightgown  and  shawl,  her  nightcap  thrown 
off,  and  her  hair  falling  upon  her  shoulders,  her  feet  in 
slippers,  tears  in  her  eyes,  but  perfectly  collected  and  digni- 
fied. "  The  Prime  Minister,  Lord  Melbourne,  was  presently 
sent  for,  and  a  meeting  of  the  Privy  Council  summoned  for 
eleven  o'clock,  when  the  Lord  Chancellor  administered  the 
usual  oaths  to  the  Queen,  and  her  Majesty  received  in 
return  the  oaths  of  allegiance  of  the  Cabinet  ministers  and 
other  privy  councillors  present.  Mr.  Greville  has  described 
the  scene: 

' '  The  King  died  at  twenty  minutes  after  two  yesterday 
morning,  and  the  young  Queen  met  the  Council  at  Kensing- 
ton Palace  at  eleven.  Never  was  anything  like  the  first 
impression  she  produced,  or  the  chorus  of  praise  and  admi- 
ration which  is  raised  about  her  manner  and  behavior,  and 
certainly  not  without  justice.  It  was  very  extraordinary, 
and  something  far  beyond  what  was  looked  for.  Her 
extreme  youth  and  inexperience,  and  the  ignorance  of  the 
•world  concerning  her,  naturally  excited  intense  curiosity  to 
see  how  she  would  act  on  this  trying  occasion,  and  there  was 
a  considerable  assemblage  at  the  palace,  notwithstanding  the 
short  notice  which  was  given.  The  first  thing  to  be  done 
was  to  teach  her  her  lesson,  which,  for  this  purpose,  Mel- 
bourne had  himself  to  learn She  bowed  to  the 

lords,  took  her  seat,  and  then  read  her  speech  in  a  clear, 
distinct,  and  audible  voice,  and  without  any  appearance  of 
fear  or  embarrassment.  She  was  quite  plainly  dressed,  and 
in  mourning.  After  she  had  read  her  speech,  and  taken  and 
signed  the  oath  for  the  security  of  the  Church  of  Scotland, 


82  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

the  privy  councillors  were  sworn,  the  two  royal  dukes  first 
by  themselves;  and  as  these  two  old  men,  her  uncles,  knelt 
before  her,  sAvearing  allegiance  and  kissing  her  hand,  I  saw 
her  blush  up  to  the  eyes,  as  if  she  felt  the  contrast  between 
their  civil  and  their  natural  relations,  and  this  was  the  only 
sign  of  emotion  which  she  evinced.  Her  manner  to  them 
was  very  graceful  and  engaging;  she  kissed  them  both,  and 
rose  from  her  chair  and  moved  toward  the  Duke  of  Sussex, 
who  was  farthest  from  her,  and  too  infirm  to  reach  her. 
She  seemed  rather  bewildered  at  the  multitude  of  men  who 
were  sworn,  and  who  came  one  after  another,  to  kiss  her 
hand,  but  she  did  not  speak  to  anybody,  nor  did  she  make 
the  slightest  difference  in  her  manner,  or  show  any  in  her 
countenance,  to  any  individual  of  any  rank,  station,  or  party. 
I  particularly  watched  her  when  Melbourne  and  the  minis- 
ters, and  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Peel  approached  her. 
She  went  through  the  whole  ceremony,  occasionally  look- 
ing at  Melbourne  for  instruction  when  she  had  any  doubt 
what  to  do,  which  hardly  ever  occurred,  and  with  perfect 
calmness  and  self-possession,  but  at  the  same  time  with  a 
graceful  modesty  and  propriety  particularly  interesting  and 
ingratiating. " 

Sir  Robert  Peel  said  that  he  was  amazed  at  ' '  her  manner 
and  behavior,  at  her  apparent  deep  sense  of  her  situation, 
and  at  the  same  time  her  firmness. "  The  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton said  in  his  blunt  way  that  if  she  had  been  his  own 
daughter  he  could  not  have  desired  to  see  her  perform  her 
part  better.  "At  twelve,"  says  Mr.  Greville,  "she  held  a 
Council,  at  which  she  presided  with  as  much  ease  as  if  she 
had  been  doing  nothing  else  all  her  life;  and  though  Lord 
Lansdowne  and  my  colleague  had  contrived  between  them 
to  make  some  confusion  with  the  Council  papers,  she  was 
not  put  out  by  it.  She  looked  very  well;  and  though  so 
small  in  stature,  and  without  much  pretension  to  beauty, 
the  gracefulness  of  her  manner  and  the  good  expression  of 


ACCESSION    AND    CORONATION    OF    QUEEN    VICTORIA.         83 

her  countenance  give  her  on  the  whole  a  very  agreeable 
appearance,  and  with  her  youth  inspire  an  excessive  interest 
in  all  who  approach  her,  and  which  I  can't  help  feeling 
myself.  ...  In  short,  she  appears  to  act  with  every 
sort  of  good  taste  and  good  feeling,  as  well  as  good  sense; 
and  as  far  as  it  has  gone  nothing  can  be  more  favorable  than 
the  impression  she  has  made,  and  nothing  can  promise  better 
than  her  manner  and  conduct  do;  though,"  Mr.  Greville 
somewhat  superfluously  adds,  ' '  it  would  be  rash  to  count 
too  confidently  upon  her  judgment  and  discretion  in  more 
weighty  matters. 

Few  remain  among  the  living  who  were  present  at  that 
gorgeous  ceremony  of  Coronation.  The  grand  old  Abbey 
had  never  seen  such  a  pageant,  nor  had  the  streets  of  Lon- 
don ever  echoed  with  more  enthusiastic  loyalty.  The  cor- 
onation did  not  take  place  till  the  year  1838. 

A  magnificent  new  crown  had  been  made  for  the  youthful 
sovereign.  Into  its  formation  all  the  jewels  of  the  crowns 
of  the  Georges  and  of  William  had  been  massed.  The 
jeweler's  best  skill  had  been  taxed  to  make  this  creation  one 
of  splendor  and  of  beauty.  On  this  auspicious  day  it  was 
to  rest  on  the  head  of  her  Majesty  Queen  Victoria. 

Escorted  by  squadrons  of  the  Blues,  the  Life  Guards,  the 
Scots  Fusiliers,  and  other  military  bodies,  and  by  the  great 
lords  and  ladies  of  her  kingdom,  the  girl-sovereign  pro- 
ceeded to  Westminster  Abbey. 

"The  great  procession,"  said  the  London  Times  of  that 
date,  "  started  from  Buckingham  Palace  at  10  o'clock  in  the 
morning.  The  first  two  state  carriages,  each  drawn  by  six 
horses,  held  the  Duchess  of  Kent  and  her  attendants.  Thd 
Queen's  mother,  regally  attired,  was  enthusiastically 
cheered  all  along  the  way.  The  Queen  in  the  grand  state 
coach  drawn  by  eight  magnificent  cream-colored  horses, 
with  flowing  manes  and  tails,  followed. 


84  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"Along  the  line  from  Buckingham  Palace  to  Westminster 
Abbey,  military  bands  and  battalions  were  stationed,  playing 
the  national  airs  and  presenting  arms  ;  and  along  the  route 
swarms  of  people  were  scattering  flowers,  waving  handker- 
chiefs, or  making  other  joyous  demonstration. 

' '  A  scene  of  the  utmost  grandeur  was  displayed  in  West- 
minster Abbey  on  the  entrance  of  the  Queen  and  her  train. 
On  each  side  of  the  nave,  reaching  from  -the  western  door 
to  the  organ  screen,  were  the  galleries  erected  for  the  spec- 
tators. These  were"  all  covered  with  crimson  cloth  fringed 
with  gold,  and  below  were  the  lines  of  f ootguards.  The  old 
stone  floor,  impressed  by  footsteps  of  kings  who  had  been 
crowned,  was  covered  with  purple  and  crimson,  and  under 
the  center  tower  of  the  Abbey,  inside  the  choir,  a  few  steps 
from  the  floor,  was  a  carpet  of  purple  and  gold,  upon  which 
was  a  platform  covered  with  cloth  of  gold,  on  which  was 
the  golden  '  Chair  of  Homage. '  The  old  chair  in  which  all 
the  sovereigns  of  England  since  Edward  the  Confessor  had 
been  crowned  stood  within  the  chancel,  and  the  '  Stone  of 
Sconce,'  on  which  the  ancient  Scottish  Kings  had  been 
crowned,  was  draped  with  a  cloth  of  gold.  The  galleries,  in 
which  were  seated  foreign  Princes,  Ernbassadors  and  mem- 
bers of  Parliament,  were  upholstered  in  crimson  cloth  and 
regal  tapestries.  In  the  organ  loft  the  singers  were  dressed 
in  white  and  the  instrumental  performers  in  scarlet ;  and  far 
above  was  a  band  of  trumpeters,  whose  music,  pealing  over 
the  heads  of  the  assembly,  produced  a  fine  effect. 

"The  foreign  Princes  and  Embassadors  were  resplendent 
in  the  dazzling  costumes  of  their  orders,  Prince  Esterhazy 
surpassing  all  by  an  exhibition  of  precious  stones  sparkling 
on  his  person  from  head  to  foot. 

"In  her  royal  robe  of  crimson  velvet,  furred  with  ermine 
and  trimmed  with  gold  lace,  her  Majesty  entered,  wearing 
the  collars  of  her  orders,  and  on  her  head  a  golden  circlet, 
her  long  train  held  by  eight  young  ladies  of  noble  birth, 


IN  THE  LOBBY  OF  THE  HOUSE  OF  LORDS. 


ACCESSION    AND    CORONATION    OF   QUEEN    VICTORIA.          85 

looking  regal.  As  she  entered  the  Abbey  the  choir  and 
orchestra  broke  out  into  *  God  Save  the  Queen '  ;  then,  as 
she  advanced  slowly  toward  the  choir  amid  deafening  cheers, 
the  anthem  '  I  Was  Glad '  was  sung  ;  and  after  that  the 
choir  boys  of  Westminster  chanted  '  Vivat  Victoria 
Regina  ! '  The  Queen  moved  slowly  to  a  chair  between  the 
Chair  of  Homage  and  the  altar,  before  which  she  knelt  in 
prayer. 

' '  On  the  conclusion  of  the  anthem,  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  and  the  high  officers  of  state  moved  to  the  east 
side  of  the  '  theater, '  when  the  Primate  said  in  a  loud  voice, 

*  I  here  present  to  you  Queen  Victoria,  the  undoubted  Queen 
of  the  realm,  wherefore  all  of  you  who  are  come  this  day  to 
your  homage,  are  you  willing  to  do  the  same  ? ' 

' '  The  '  recognition, '  <  God  save  Queen  Victoria, '  was 
cried  by  the  people  and  repeated  from  every  side  of  the 

*  theater '  amid  the  pealing  of  trumpets  and  the  beating  of 
drums,  .the  Queen  standing  through  the  ceremony  and  each 
time  turning  her  head  toward  the  point  from  which  the 
4  recognition '  came. 

' '  This  was  followed  by  the  receiving  and  presenting  of 
offerings,  the  reading  of  prayers,  and  by  the  sermon ;  then 
followed  the  administration  of  the  oath,  and  the  catechism 
by  the  Archbishop  in  regard  to  the  Established  Church. 

' '  The  Queen  was  conducted  to  the  altar,  where,  kneeling 
with  her  hand  upon  the  great  Bible,  she  said  in  a  clear, 
solemn  voice  :  'The  things  which  I  have  here  before  prom- 
ised I  will  perform  and  keep.  So  help  me  God  ? ' 

' '  She  then  kissed  the  book  ;  and  the  hymn  '  Come,  Holy 
Ghost,  our  souls  inspire '  was  sung  by  the  choir,  the  Queen 
still  kneeling. 

"Her  Majesty  seated  herself  in  St.  Edward's  chair;  a 
gorgeous  cloth  of  gold  was  held  over  her  head  ;  and  the 
Archbishop  anointed  her  with  holy  oil,  in  the  form  of  a 
cross.  Prayers  were  offered,  the  sword  and  spurs  were  pre- 


86  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

sented,  her  Majesty  was  invested  with  the  imperial  robe, 
the  sceptre  and  the  ring,  the  new  crown  was  consecrated 
and  blessed,  and  the  Queen  was  crowned. 

' '  The  moment  the  Queen  was  crowned  by  the  Primate, 
the  Peers  and  Peeresses  lifted  to  their  own  heads  their  cor- 
onets and  the  Queen  was  conducted  to  the  Chair  of  Homage. 

' '  The  lords  spiritual  headed  by  the  Primate,  performed 
the  first  homage  to  the  Queen,  kneeling  and  kissing  her 
hand.  Then  came  the  Dukes  of  Sussex  and  Cambridge,  her 
Majesty's  uncles,  who,  removing  their  coronets,  and  touch- 
ing them  to  the  crown,  solemnly  pledged  their  allegiance 
and  kissed  the  Queen  on  the  left  cheek.  Then  the  other 
Peers  did  homage  by  kneeling,  touching  coronet  to  crown, 
and  kissing  her  Majesty's  hands. 

' '  When  the  sacrament  was  administered  to  the  Queen  she 
laid  aside  her  crown  while  partaking,  and  again  assuming 
it,  received  the  final  benediction." 

Sixty  years  have  passed  since  then,  and  now  the  venerable 
Queen,  rich  in  sacred  memories  and  hallowed  graves,  who- 
has  held  the  chalice  of  widowhood  in  her  hand  for  so  many 
years,  hears  echoing  among  her  Scottish  hills  the  tolling  of 
the  Hawarden  bells,  and  sends  to  that  gracious  lady  who 
sits  silently  among  the  shadows  that  have  fallen  a  message 
of  tender  sympathy  and  love — a  message  all  the  more 
pathetic  because  she  feels  her  royal  solitude  growing  more 
and  more  intense,  as  one  by  one  the  royal  standard-bearers, 
of  her  reign  pass  into  the  silent  land. 

Sixty  years  ago  !  When  the  Queen  was  crowned  in  the 
grand  old  Abbey  witnesses  tell  how  she  wept  most  gracious, 
tears  as  she  heard  the  loyal  shouts  of  the  mighty  multitude. 
Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning,  the  singing,  suffe  ring  nightin- 
gale, who  filled  the  early  years  of  the  Victorian  Age  with 
deathless  song,  has  crystalized  those  tears  in  the  following 
delightful  stanzas : 


THE  LOKD  CHANCELLOR  PRESIDING  ON  THE  WOOLSACK  IN  THE 
HOUSE  OF  LORDS. 


ACCESSION    AND   CORONATION    OF   QUEEN   VICTORIA.         87 

"  O  Maiden  !  heir  of  king's  ! 

A  king1  has  left  his  place  ! 
The  majesty  of  death  has  swept 

All  other  from  his  face  ! 
And  thou  upon  thy  mother's  breast 

No  longer  lean  adown. 
But  take  the  glory  for  the  rest, 
And  rule  the  land  that  loves  the  best !" 
She  heard  and  wept — 

She  wept,  to  wear  a  crown  ! 

They  decked  her  courtly  halls  ; 

They  reined  her  hundred  steeds  ; 
They  shouted  at  her  palace  gate, 

"  A  noble  Queen  succeeds!" 
Her  name  has  stirred  the  mountains'  sleep 

Her  praise  has  filled  the  town  ! 
And  mourners  GoJ  had  stricken  deep 
Looked  hearkening  up,  and  did  not  weep. 
Alone  she  wept, 

Who  wept,  to  wear  a  crown  ! 

She  saw  no  purple  shine, 

For  tears  had  dimmed  her  eyes  ; 
She  only  knew  her  childhood's  flowers 

Were  happier  pageantries ! 
And  while  her  heralds  played  the  part, 

For  million  shouts  to  drown — 
"  God  save  the  Queen  "  from  hill  to  mart- 
She  heard  through  all  her  beating  heart, 
And  turned  and  wept — 

She  wept,  to  wear  a  crown  ! 

God  save  thee,  weeping  Queen  ! 

Thou  shalt  be  well  beloved  ! 
The  tyrant's  sceptre  can  not  move, 

As  those  pure  tears  have  moved  ! 
The  nature  in  thine  eyes  we  see, 

That  tyrants  can  not  own — 
The  love  that  guardeth  liberties! 
Strange  blessing  on  the  nation  lies, 
Whose  Sovereign  wept — 

Yea  !  wept  to  wear  its  crown  ! 

God  bless  thee,  weeping  Queen, 

With  blessing  more  divine  ! 
And  fill  with  happier  love  than  earth's 

That  tender  heart  of  thine  ! 
That  when  the  thrones  of  earth  shall  be 

As  low  as  graves  brought  down  ; 
A  pierced  hand  may  give  to  thee 
The  crown  which  angels  shout  to  see  ! 
Thou  wilt  not  WEEP. 

To  wear  that  heavenly  crown  ! 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE   BUSY   PRIVATE     MEMBER. 

The  world  wants  action.  The  world  would  move  but  slowly  if  all 
men  were  content  with  good  dinners  and  a  quiet  life. 

— E.   P.  Roe. 

The  man  most  man 

Works  best  for  me;  and  if  most  man  indeed, 
He  gets  his  manhood  plainest  from  his  soul: 
While  obviously  this  stringent  soul  itself 
Obeys  our  old  law  of  development; 
The  Spirit  ever  witnessing  in  ours, 
And  Love,  the  soul  of  soul,  within  the  soul, 

Evolving  it  sublimely. 

— Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning. 

Mr.  Gladstone  had  hardly  buckled  on  the  armor  of  official 
service  when  the  whirl-i-gig  of  time  wrought  its  strange  and 
unanticipated  changes.  On  the  eighth  of  April,  1835,  Sir 
Robert  Peel  resigned  with  the  downfall  of  the  government, 
Mr.  Gladstone  became  once  more  a  private  member  of 
Parliament.  But  though  a  private  member,  he  led  a  most 
active  and  interesting  life.  He  occupied  rooms  at  the 
Albany,  and  entered  with  great  zest  and  enthusiasm  into  the 
thousand  and  one  engagements  which  were  common  to 
public  men  in  those  days.  He  was  regular  in  attendance  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  and  took  almost  as  much  interest  in 
the  debates  of  the  House  as  he  would  have  done  had  the 
responsibility  of  office  rested  on  his  shoulders.  He  went  a 
good  deal  into  society,  where  his  presence  was  regarded  as 
a  great  favor.  He  was  very  popular  in  aristocratic  circles, 
the  doors  of  the  noble  and  the  distinguished  were  wide  open 
to  bid  him  welcome,  but  there  was  little  danger  that  the 
young  statesman  would  dwindle  down  into  a  mere  leader  of 
fashionable  society.  Life  was  always  very  real,  and  very 

88 


THE    BUSY    PRIVATE    MEMBER.  89 

earnest  with  him.  An  important  debate  in  the  House  of 
Commons  had  power  to  charm  him  from  the  most  brilliant 
assemblage,  and  from  the  most  delightful  entertainment. 
He  rallied  to  the  support  of  the  government  when  the  affairs 
of  Canada  were  up  for  discussion. 

A  debate  on  the  Church  Rate  question  brought  forth  all 
his  magnificent  powers  of  oratory.  This  speech  delivered 
in  the  spring  of  1837  occupied  no  less  than  thirteen  columns 
in  Hansard. 

The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  Mr.  Spring  Rice,  had 
propounded  a  plan  for  the  re-arrangement  of  Church  rates, 
which  he  hoped  would  be  satisfactory  at  once  to  the  scruples 
of  Dissenters  and  the  claims  of  the  Establishment.  His 
scheme,  in  essence,  was  to  take  the  whole  property  of  the 
bishops,  deans  and  chapters  out  of  the  hands  of  those  digni- 
taries, and  to  vest  them  in  the  hands  of  a  commission,  under 
whose  improved  system  of  management,  it  was  calculated, 
that  after  paying  to  their  full  present  amount  all  existing 
incomes,  a  sum  not  less  than  that  assigned  by  Lord  Althorp 
might  be  saved  and  applied  for  the  purposes  of  Church 
rates.  When  the  House  went  into  committee  on  Mr.  Rice's 
resolutions,  they  were  opposed  by  Sir  Robert  Peel  on  finan- 
cial as  well  as  conscientious  grounds.  Mr.  Gladstone  fol- 
lowed in  the  same  strain,  and  the  peroration  of  his  speech 
—in  which  he  drew  a  comparison  between  Rome  and  Eng- 
land, and  insisted  upon  religion  being  the  basis  of  the  great- 
ness of  the  State — was,  perhaps,  the  most  impassioned 
specimen  of  oratory  with  which  he  had  yet  favored  the 
House. 

"It  was  not,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "by  the  active  strength 
and  resistless  prowess  of  her  legions,  the  bold  independence 
of  her  citizens,  or  the  well-maintained  equilibrium  of  her 
constitution,  or  by  the  judicious  adaptation  of  various 
measures  to  the  various  circumstances  of  her  subject  states, 
that  the  Roman  power  was  upheld.  Its  foundation  lay  in 


90  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

the  prevailing  feeling  of  religion.  This  was  the  superior 
power  which  curbed  the  license  of  individual  rule,  and 
engendered  in  the  people  a  lofty  disinterestedness  and  disre- 
gard of  personal  motives  and  devotion  to  the  glory  of  the 
republic.  The  devotion  of  the  Romans  was  not  enlightened 
by  a  knowledge  of  the  precepts  of  Christianity;  here  relig- 
ion was  still  more  deeply  rooted  and  firmly  fixed.  And 
would  they  now  consent  to  compromise  the  security  of  its 
firmest  bulwark?  No  Ministry  would  dare  to  propose  its 
unconditional  surrender;  but  with  the  same  earnestness  and 
depth  of  feeling  with  which  they  should  deprecate  the  open 
avowal  of  such  a  determination,  they  ought  to  resist  the 
covert  and  insidious  introduction  of  the  principle. "  When 
the  division  came,  however,  the  Ministry  obtained  a  majority 
of  23,  the  numbers  being  —  For  the  resolutions,  273; 
against,  250. 

Close  upon  the  heels*  of  this  debate,  the  Anti-Slavery 
question  came  up  for  consideration.  The  wildest  stories 
were  afloat  concerning  the  horrors  to  which  negro  appren- 
tices were  subjected,  and  true  or  not  true,  the  public  mind 
was  aroused,  and  such  men  as  Lord  Brougham  and  Dr. 
I^ushington  led  the  van  in  agitation.  According  to  the 
conditions  of  the  Emancipation  Act,  slavery  had  been  abol- 
ished from  the  year  1834,  but  negro  apprenticeship  was  not 
to  terminate  until  1840.  Lord  Brougham  introduced  the 
subject  in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  moved  the  immediate 
abolition  of  negro  apprenticeship.  Spite  of  the  harrowing 
records  of  cruelty  and  wrongs  perpetrated  on  helpless 
youth,  spite  of  the  eloquence  and  logic  of  the  distinguished 
advocate  for  freedom,  spite  of  the  allegation  that  attempts 
were  being  made  to  perpetuate  slavery  in  a  new  form,  the 
noble  lords  rejected  the  motion  with  a  marked  majority. 
On  the  twenty-ninth  of  March  in  this  same  year,  Sir  George 
Strickland  proposed  a  similar  resolution  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  Mr.  Gladstone  delivered  a  long  address  extend- 


THE  SUNDAY  OKATOK  OF  HYDE  PARK. 


THE    BUSY    PRIVATE    MEMBER.  91 

ing  over  thirty-three  columns  of  the  official  reports.  Mr. 
Gladstone  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  when  the  Aboli- 
tion Act  of  1833  was  brought  forward,  those  who  were 
connected  with  West  Indian  slavery  joined  in  the  passing  of 
the  measure 

"We  professed  a  belief,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  that  the 
state  of  slavery  was  an  evil  and  a  demoralizing  state,  ajjd 
desired  to  be  relieved  from  it;  we  accepted  a  price  in  com- 
position for  the  loss  which  was  expected  to  accrue,  and  if 
after  the^e  professions  and  that  acceptance  we  have  endeav- 
ored to  prolong  its  existence  and  its  abuses  under  another 
appellation,  no  language  can  adequately  characterize  our 
baseness,  and  either  everlasting  ignominy  must  be  upon  us, 
or  you  are  not  justified  in  carrying  this  motion."  But  he 
utterly  and  confidently  denied  the  charge,  as  it  affected  the 
mass  of  the  planters,  and  as  it  affected  the  mass  of  the  appren- 
tices. By  the  facts  to  be  adduced  he  would  stand  or  fall. 
"Oh,  sir,"  he  continued,  "with  what  depth  of  desire  have  I 
longed  for  this  day!  Sore,  and  wearied,  and  irritated,  per- 
haps, with  the  grossly  exaggerated  misrepresentations,  and 
with  the  utter  calumnies  that  have  been  in  circulation  with- 
out the  means  of  reply,  how  do  I  rejoice  to  meet  them  in 
free  discussion  before  the  face  of  the  British  Parliament! 
And  I  earnestly  wish  that  I  may  be  enabled  to  avoid  all 
language  and  sentiments  similar  to  those  I  have  reprobated 
in  others.''  He  then  proceeded  to  show  that  the  character 
of  the  planters  was  at  stake.  They  were  attacked  both  on 
moral  and  pecuniary  grounds.  The  apprenticeship — as 
Lord  Stanley  distinctly  stated  when  he  introduced  the 
measure — was  a  part  of  the  compensation.  Negro  labor 
had  a  marketable  value,  and  it  would  be  unjust  to  those  who 
had  the  right  in  it  to  deprive  them  of  it.  Besides,  the 
House  had  assented  to  this  right  as  far  as  the  year  1840, 
and  was  morally  bound  to  fulfil  its  compact.  The  committee 


92  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

presided  over  by  Mr.    Buxton   had    reported   against  the 
necessity  for  this  change. 

Mr.  Gladstone,  with  great  fullness  of  detail,  next  exam- 
ined the  relations  between  the  planters  and  the  negroes,  and 
with  regard  to  the  cases  of  alleged  cruelty,  he  showed  that 
they  had  been  constantly  and  enormously  on  the  decrease 
since  the  period  of  abolition.  He  strongly  deprecated  all 
such  appeals  as  were  made  to  individual  instances  and  exag- 
gerated representations,  and  endeavored,  by  elaborate  sta- 
tistics, to  prove  that  the  abuses  were  far  from  being  general. 
The  use  of  the  lash,  as  a  stimulus  to  labor,  had  died  a 
natural  death  in  British  Guiana.  During  the  preceding  five 
months  only  eleven  corporal  punishments  had  been  inflicted 
in  a  population  of  seven  thousand  persons,  yielding  an 
average  of  seven  hundred  lashes  by  the  year,  and  these  not 
for  neglect  of  work,  but  for  theft.  Towards  the  close  of 
his  speech,  Mr.  Gladstone  thus  effectively  turned  the  tables, 
in  one  sense,  upon  his  opponents  by  a  tu  quoque  argument. 
"Have  you,"  he  went  on  to  say,  "who  are  so  exasperated 
with  the  West  Indian  apprenticeship  that  you  will  not  wait 
two  years  for  its  natural  expiration, — have  you  inquired 
what  responsibility  lies  upon  every  one  of  you,  at  the 
moment  when  I  speak,  with  reference  to  the  cultivation  of 
cotton  in  America  ?  In  that  country  there  are  near  three 
millions  of  slaves.  You  hear  not  from  that  land  of  the  abo- 
lition— not  even  of  the  mitigation — of  slavery.  It  is  a 
domestic  institution,  and  is  to  pass  without  limit,  we  are 
told,  from  age  to  age ;  and  we,  much  more  than  they,  are 
responsible  for  this  enormous  growth  of  what  purports  to 
be  an  eternal  slavery  .  .  .  You  consumed  forty- 
five  millions  of  pounds  of  cotton  in  1837,  which  pro- 
ceeded from  free  labor ;  and,  proceeding  from  slave  labor, 
three  hundred  and  eighteen  millions  of  pounds  !  And  this 
while  the  vast  regions  of  India  afford  the  means  of  obtain- 
ing, at  a  cheaper  rate,  and  by  a  slight  original  outlay  .to 


THE    BUSY    PRIVATE    MEMBER.  93 

facilitate  transport,  all  that  you  can  require.  If,  sir,  the 
complaints  against  the  general  body  of  the  West  Indians 
had  been  substantiated,  I  should  have  deemed  it  an  unworthy 
artifice  to  attempt  diverting  the  attention  of  the  House  from 
the  question  immediately  at  issue,  by  merely  proving  that 
other  delinquencies  existed  in  other  quarters ;  but  feeling 
as  I  do  that  those  charges  have  been  overthrown  in  debate, 
I  think  myself  entitled  and  bound  to  show  how  capricious  are 
honorable  gentlemen  in  the  distribution  of  their  sympathies 
among  those  different  objects  which  call  for  their  applica- 
tion. "  He  concluded  by  asking  for  justice  alone,  and 
demanded  that  the  Legislature  should  not  be  deaf  to  that 
call.  With  the  influence  of  this  vigorous  defense  of  the 
planters  upon  it,  the  House  went  to  a  division.  Sir  George 
Strickland's  motion  was  lost,  the  numbers  being — Ayes, 
215  ;  Noes,  269— majority,  54.  The  Times  newspaper,  on 
the  following  day,  admitted  the  force  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
speech,  which,  from  an  oratorical  point  of  view,  was  com- 
pletely successful.  It  also  disposed  of  many  allegations 
that  had  been  made  against  the  planters,  although  it  did  not 
remove  the  grounds  upon  which  the  anti-Slavery  agitation 
was  based,  and  by  which  evils  it  was  justified.  There  were 
complaints  of  oppression  and  exaction  which  could  not  be 
denied,  and  the  House  of  Assembly  in  Jamaica  had  by  no 
means  shown  its  readiness  to  fulfill  that  portion  of  the  com- 
pact of  1833-4  which  devolved  upon  it,  and  by  which  there 
had  been  secured  to  the  West  Indian  proprietors  a  sum  of 
not  less  than  a  hundred  millions  of  dollars  as  an  allowance 
for  six  years'  apprenticeship. 

This  speech  added  greatly  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  fame  as  a 
great  debater.  Here  is  an  interesting  description  of  the 
young  orator  as  others  saw  him  in  these  formative  years. 

A  constant  attendant  on  the  House  of  Commons  speaks 
thus  of  him  : 

' '  Mr.  Gladstone's  appearance  and  manners  are  much  in 


94  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

his  favor.  He  is  a  fine-looking  man.  He  is  about  the 
usual  height,  and  of  good  figure.  His  countenance  is  mild 
and  pleasant,  and  has  a  highly  intellectual  expression.  His 
eyes  are  clear  and  quick.  His  eyebrows  are  dark  and  rather 
prominent.  There  is  not  a  dandy  in  the  House  but  envies 
what  Truefit  would  call  his  'fine  head  of  jet-black  hair.'  It 
is  always  carefully  parted  from  the  crown  downwards  to  his 
brow,  where  it  is  tastefully  shaded.  His  features  are 
small  and  regular,  and  his  complexion  must  be  a  very 
unworthy  witness  if  he  does  not  possess  an  abundant  stock 
of  health. 

"Mr.  Gladstone's  gesture  is  varied,  but  not  violent. 
When  he  rises  he  generally  puts  both  his  hands  behind 
his  back ;  and  having  there  suffered  them  to  embrace 
each  other  for  a  short  time,  he  unclasps  them,  and 
allows  them  to  drop  on  either  side.  They  are  not  permitted 
to  remain  long  in  that  locality  before  you  see  them  again 
closed  together  and  hanging  down  before  him.  Their 
re-union  is  not  suffered  to  last  for  any  length  of  time. 
Again  a  separation  takes  place,  and  now  the  right  hand  is 
seen  moving  up  and  down  before  him.  Having  thus  exer- 
cised it  a  little,  he  thrusts  it  into  the  pocket  of  his  coat*  and 
then  orders  the  left  hand  to  follow  its  example.  Having 
granted  them  a  momentary  repose  there,  they  are  again  put 
into  gentle  motion ;  and  in  a  few  seconds  they  are  seen 
reposing  vis-a-vis  on  his  breast.  He  moves  his  face  and 
body  from  one  direction  to  another,  not  forgetting  to  bestow 
a  liberal  share  of  his  attention  on  his  own  party.  He  is 
always  listened  to  with  much  attention  by  the  House,  and 
appears  to  be  highly  respected  by  men  of  all  parties.  He 
is  a  man  of  good  business  habits:  of  this  he  furnished 
abundant  proof  when  Under-Secretary  for  the  Colonies, 
during  the  short-lived  administration  of  Sir  Kobert  Peel." 

On  the  8th  of  April,  1840,  Mr.  Gladstone  made  another 
of  his  impassioned  speeches.  Sir  James  Graham  brought 


THE    BUSY    PRIVATE    MEMBER.  95 

forward  a  resolution  concerning  the  war  with  China  arising 
from  the  traffic  in  opium.  Mr.  Gladstone  rallied  to  the 
support  of  Sir  James  Graham,  and  in  reply  to  a  speech  of 
Mr.  Macaulay's  on  the  previous  evening,  he  said: 

"The  right  honorable  gentleman  opposite  spoke  last  night 
in  eloquent  terms  of  the  British  flag  waving  in  glory  at 
Canton,  and  of  the  animating  effects  produced  on  the  minds 
of  our  sailors  by  the  knowledge  that  in  no  country  under 
heaven  was  it  permitted  to  be  insulted.  But  how  comes  it 
to  pass  that  the  sight  of  that  flag  always  raises  the  spirit  of 
Englishmen?  It  is  because  it  has  always  been  associated 
with  the  cause  of  justice,  with  opposition  to  oppression, 
with  respect  for  national  rights,  with  honorable  commercial 
enterprise ;  but  now,  under  the  auspices  of  the  noble  lord, 
that  flag  is  hoisted  to  protect  an  infamous  contraband  traffic, 
and  if  it  were  never  to  be  hoisted  except  as  it  is  now  hoisted 
on  the  coast  of  China,  we  should  recoil  from  its  sight  with 
horror,  and  should  never  again  feel  our  hearts  thrill  as 
they  now  thrill  with  emotion,  when  it  floats  proudly  and 
magnificently  on  the  breeze."  Notwithstanding  the  elo- 
quence arrayed  against  them,  Ministers  obtained  a  bare 
majority  upon  the  proposed  vote  of  censure,  the  numbers 
being — For  Sir  J.  Graham's  motion,  262  ;  against,  271. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  CHURCH. 

Religion  crowns  the  statesman  and  the  man, 
Sole  source  of  public  and  of  private  peace. 

— Edward  Young. 

Christianity  rose  out  of  the  dying1  ashes  of  Paganism,  restored 
conscience  to  its  supremacy,  and  made  real  belief  in  God  once  more 
possible.— -L.  J.  Froude. 

The  Church  has  for  long  lived  upon  the  divinity  of  its  attitudes 
and  upturned  eyes,  and  the  blackness  of  its  cloth.  While  it  was  thus 
posturing  before  the  altar,  the  congregation  has  slipped  out  into  the 
fresh  air  to  find  the  life  of  humanity  or  the  indescribable  richness  of 
the  fields  where  there  are  no  vain  repetitions. 

— David  Swing. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  achievements  in  the  fields  of  literature 
would  entitle  him  to  a  very  enviable  renown.  Literature 
was  the  recreation  rather  than  the  business  of  his  life.  The 
fascinations  of  logical  research  wooed  him  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  romance  of  classic  history  and  lore  charmed 
him  on  the  other.  In  the  sombre  shades  of  the  cloister  and 
the  cell,  or  in  the  mystic  splendors  of  the  Homeric  age,  he 
was  equally  at  home.  He  was  bowed  with  awe  amid  the 
thunderings  and  lightnings  of  Sinia,  or  stood  enraptured 
amid  the  fitful  glories  of  high  Olympus.  He  had  unspeak- 
able delight  in  translating  "Rock  of  Ages"  into  the  Latin 
tongue,  or  in  reviewing  "Ecce  Homo,"  or  in  writing  a 
treatise  on  Wedgwood  China.  He  loved  the  wide  fields  of 
literature,  and  trod  them  with  a  free  and  gracious  step,  but 
it  is  reasonable  to  conclude  that  the  circumstances  of  the 
time  had  much  to  do  in  inspiring  his  first  serious  literary 
task. 

In  the  autumn  of  1838,  Mr.  Gladstone  published  his  first 

96 


THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  CHURCH.  97 

book  :  "The  State  in  Its  Relations  with  the  Church."  In 
this  country,  where  the  dream  of  "  A  Free  Church  in  a  Free 
State  "  is  realized  to  perfection,  it  is  somewhat  difficult  to 
explain  to  an  American  what  such  terms  as  "Dissenter"  and 
"  Nonconformist "  mean  in  England  even  to-day,  and  much 
more  difficult  to  explain  what  such  terms  involved  in  the 
days  when  the  young  member  for  Newark  set  his  glittering 
lance  in  rest,  and  came  forth  as  the  champion  of  the  Church 
as  by  law  established.  Nonconformity  was  becoming  a 
mighty  factor  in  the  nation.  Nonconformity  was  young 
Puritanism  full  grown,  and  included  all  those  who  from 
deep  religious  scruples,  sought  to  worship  God  according  to 
their  conscience.  They  were  the  spiritual  descendants  of 
the  men  who  in  1618  met  King  James  I.  at  Hampden  Court 
palace  and  told  him  that,  while  they  were  loyal  to  his  person 
and  his  throne,  they  could  not  conform  to  the  teachings  of 
the  Church  of  England  nor  follow  the  order  of  its  ritual. 
The  angry,  foolish  King  declared  that  he  would  make  them 
conform  or  he  would  "  harry  them  out  of  the  land."  The 
former  thing  he  could  not  do,  but  the  latter  he  did,  and  in 
1620  they  sailed  in  the  Mayflower  from  Southampton  water, 
and,  leaving  the  homes  they  loved  and  the  graves  that  were 
sacred,  they  journeyed  toward  the  setting  sun  that  on  ' '  the 
bleak  New  England  shore  "  they  might  found  a  colony  for 
God  and  King  James,  where  they  might  enjoy  the  luxury 
of  religious  freedom. 

In  deathless  song  Mrs.   Hemans  has  marked  and  immor- 
talized the  landing  of  this  heroic  company  : 

And  the  heavy  night  hung  dark, 

The  hills  and  waters  o'er  ; 
When  a  band  of  exiles  moored  their  bark 

On  the  wild  New  England  shore. 

Not  as  the  conqueror  comes, 

They,  the  true-hearted,  came  ; 
Not  with  the  roll  of  the  stirring  drums, 

And  the  trumpet  that  speaks  of  fame. 


98  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Not  as  the  flying  come — 

In  silence  and  in  fear  ; 
They  shook  the  depths  of  the  desert 

With  their  hymns  of  lofty  cheer. 

Amid  the  storm  they  sang, 

And  the  stars  heard,  and  the  sea  ; 
And  the  sounding  aisles  of  the  dim  woods  rang 

To  the  anthem  of  the  free. 

The  ocean  eagle  soared 

From  his  nest  by  the  wild  waves'  foam, 
And  the  rocking  pines  of  the  forest  roared — 

This  was  their  welcome  home. 

*  *  *  *  * 

What  sought  they  thus  afar  ? 

Bright  jewels  of  the  mine  ? 
The  wealth  of  seas   the  spoils  of  war  ? 

They  sought  a  faith's  pure  shrine  ! 

Ay,  call  it  holy  ground, 

The  soil  where  first  they  trod — 
They  have  left  unstained  what  there  they  found — 

Freedom  to  worship  God. 

The  Nonconformist  claimed  he  was  the  true  Conformist,  for 
he  was  loyal  to  his  conscience  and  his  God.  Nonconformity 
was  growing  in  numbers,  in  character,  and  in  influence.  It 
did  not  care  to  assume  the  dignified  name  of  "  Church"  to 
its  edifices ;  it  was  perfectly  content  to  worship  in  a 
"Chapel."  Its  ministers  were  not  regarded  by  bigoted 
ecclesiastics  as  properly  "ordained"  or  duly  qualified  to 
discharge  the  sacred  rites  of  religion,  but  they  preached  with 
power  and  wrought  great  work  for  God.  Nonconformity 
built  its  sanctuaries  and  colleges,  and  ,/pened  and  conducted 
schools  of  education,  and  voluntarily  paid  for  everything 
without  asking  a  cent  from  the  national  coffer.  The  leaven 
of  nonconformity  was  working.  In  the  midland  counties 
o-  England  especially,  men  who  had  the  confidence  of  the 
people,  were  banding  themselves  together  to  agitate  for  the 
redress  of  grievances.  Such  men  as  Dr.  Legge,  the  Rev. 
J.  P.  Mursell,  Carvell  Williams  and  Edward  Miall  formed 


THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  CHURCH.  99 

"  An  Anti-State  Church  Association, "  which  was  merged  at 
last  into  "The  Society  for  the  Liberation  of  Religion  from 
State  Patronage  and  Control,"  briefly  known  as  "The  Lib- 
eration Society,"  which  still  exists,  as  it  believes  with  suffi- 
cient cause,  and  is  holding  its  annual  meetings  in  this  month 
of  May,  in  this  year  of  grace,  1898.  That  nonconformity 
was  seriously  and  silently  at  work  Mr.  Gladstone  knew  full 
well.  If  he  came  forth  at  this  interesting  and  suggestive 
period  to  defend  and  champion  the  Church  of  England,  it 
was  not  because  he  was  afraid.  He  was  not  much  given  to 
the  theory  that  "There's  a  divinity  that  doth  hedge  a 
King,"  but  he  did  believe  that  the  Church  of  England  was 
God's  church,  divinely  summoned  to  a  divine  work.  In  all 
of  which  he  was,  no  doubt,  perfectly  right.  The  noncon- 
formist minister  held  precisely  the  same  view  of  the  church 
to  which  God  called  him  to  minister  in  holy  things.  Mr. 
Gladstone  was  not  an  alarmist.  He  did  not  haste  to  the 
rescue  of  a  church  in  danger  !  He  called  the  serious  atten- 
tion of  England  to  the  foundations  on  which  what  he 
regarded  the  most  sacred  institution  of  the  country  was 
founded.  The  book  commanded  widespread  attention  at 
once.  Bitter  opponents  were  compelled  to  recognize  the 
author's  remarkable  ability.  The  work  was  inscribed  : 

"To  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  OXFORD: 

"Tried  and  not  found  wanting  through  the  vicissitudes 
of  a  thousand  years  ;  in  the  belief  that  she  is  providentially 
designed  to  be  a  fountain  of  blessings,  spiritual,  social  and 
intellectual,  to  this  and  other  countries,  to  the  present  and 
future  times,  and  in  the  hope  that  the  temper  of  these 
pages  may  be  found  not  alien  to  her  own. " 

How  this  alumnus  loved  his  alma  mater  ! 

The  brilliant  Macaulay  in  his  searching  criticism  said  : 
"We  believe  we  do  him  no  more  than  justice  when  we  say 
that  his  abilities  and  demeanor  have  obtained  for  him  the 


100  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

respect  and  good  will  of  all  parties.  That  a, 

young  politician  should,  in  the  intervals  afforded  by  his 
Parliamentary  avocations,  have  constructed  and  propounded, 
with  much  study  and  mental  toil,  an  original  theory  on  a 
great  problem  in  politics,  is  a  circumstance  which,  abstracted 
from  all  considerations  of  the  soundness  or  unsoundness  of 
his  opinions,  must  he  considered  as  highly  creditable  to  him. 
We  certainly  can  not  wish  that  Mr.  Gladstone's  doctrines 
may  become  fashionable  among  public  men.  But  we 
heartily  wish  that  his  laudable  desire  to  penetrate  beneath 
the  surface  of  questions,  and  to  arrive,  by  long  and  intent 
meditation,  at  the  knowledge  of  great  and  general  laws, 
were  much  more  fashionable  than  we  at  all  expect  it  to 
become. " 

This  is  neither  time  nor  place  to  enter  into  any  exhaustive 
criticism  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  first  contribution  to  the  litera- 
ture of  his  age.  Apart  altogether  from  its  subject  matter, 
it  is  well  worth  careful  perusal.  The  one  word  ' '  thor- 
oughness "  that  marks  all  his  work  applies  to  this  carefully 
written  treatise.  One  might  Avell  imagine  that  this  theme 
had  been  the  one  commanding  study  of  his  life.  The  book 
went  through  four  editions,  each  adition  being  revised  and 
considerably  enlarged.  We  quote  only  one  passage,  which 
has  become  quite  famous,  by  reason  of  its  relation  to  the 
Irish  Church,  which  in  due  time  Mr.  Gladstone  disestab- 
lished and  disendowed. 

"  The  Protestant  legislature  of  the  British  Empire  main- 
tains in  the  possession  of  the  Church  property  of  Ireland 
the  ministers  of  a  creed  professed,  according  to  the  parlia- 
mentary enumeration  of  1835,  by  one-ninth  of  its  popula- 
tion, regarded  with  partial  favor  by  scarcely  another  ninth, 
and  disowned  by  the  remaining  seven.  And  not  only  does 
this  anomaly  meet  us  full  in  view,  but  we  have  also  to  con- 
sider and  digest  the  fact  that  the  maintenance  of  this 
Church  for  near  three  centuries  in  Ireland  has  been  contem- 


THE  .CHAMPION    OF   THE    CHURCH.  101 

poraneous  with  a  system  of  partial  and  abusive  government, 
varying  in  degree  of  culpability,  but  rarely,  until  of  later 
years,  when  we  have  been  forced  to  look  at  the  subject  and 
to  feel  it,  to  be  exempted  in  common  fairness  from  the 
reproach  of  gross  inattention  (to  say  the  very  least)  to  the 
interests  of  a  noble  but  neglected  people. 

"But  however  formidable  at  first  sight  these  admissions, 
which  I  have  no  desire  to  narrow  or  to  qualify,  may  appear, 
they  in  no  Avay  shake  the  foregoing  arguments.  They  do 
not  change  the  nature  of  truth  and  her  capability  and  des- 
tiny to  benefit  mankind.  They  do  not  relieve  government 
of  its  responsibility,  if  they  show  that  that  responsibility 
was  once  unfelt  and  unsatisfied.  They  place  the  legislature 
of  this  country  in  the  condition,  as  it  were,  of  one  called 
to  do  penance  for  past  offenses  ;  but  duty  remains  unaltered 
and  imperative,  and  abates  nothing  of  her  demand  on  our 
services.  It  is  undoubtedly  competent,  in  a  constitutional 
view,  to  the  government  of  this  country  to  continue  the 
present  disposition  of  church  property  in  Ireland.  It 
a}) pears  not  too  much  to  assume  that  our  imperial  legisla- 
ture has  been  qualified  to  take,  and  has  taken  in  point  of 
fact,  a  sounder  view  of  religious  truth  than  the  majority  of 
the  people  of  Ireland,  in  their  destitute  and  uninstructed 
state.  We  believe,  accordingly,  that  that  which  we  place 
before  them  is,  whether  they  know  it  or  not,  calculated  to 
be  beneficial  to  them,  and  that  if  they  know  it  not  now 
they  will  know  it  when  it  is  presented  to  them  fairly. 
Shall  we,  then,  purchase  their  applause  at  the  expense  of 
their  substantial,  nay,  their  spiritual  interests  ? 

' '  It  does,  indeed,  so  happen  that  there  are  also  powerful 
motives  on  the  other  side,  concurring  with  that  which  has 
here  been  represented  as  paramount.  In  the  first  instance, 
we  are  not  called  upon  to  establish  a  creed,  but  only  to  main- 
tain an  existing  legal  settlement,  where  our  constitutional 
right  is  undoubted.  In  the  second,  political  considerations 


102  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. - 

tend  strongly  to  recommend  that  maintenance.  A  common 
form  of  faith  binds  the  Irish  Protestants  to  ourselves,  while 
they,  upon  the  other  hand,  are  fast  linked  to  Ireland  ;  and 
thus  they  supply  the  most  natural  bond  of  connection 
between  the  countries.  But  if  England,  by  overthrowing 
their  Church  should  weaken  their  moral  position,  they  would 
be  no  longer  able,  perhaps  no  longer  willing,  to  counteract 
the  desires  of  the  majority,  tending,  under  the  direction  of 
their  leaders  (however,  by  a  wise  policy,  revocable  from  that 
fatal  course),  to  what  is  termed  national  independence.  Pride 
and  fear,  on  the  one  hand,  are,  therefore,  bearing  up  against 
more  immediate  apprehension  and  difficulty  on  the  other. 
And  with  some  men  these  may  be  the  fundamental  consid- 
erations ;  but  it  may  be  doubted  whether  such  men  will  not 
flinch  in  some  stage  of  the  contest,  should  its  aspect  at  any 
moment  become  unfavorable." 

Here  follow  Mr.  Gladstone's  chief  reasons  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  Church  Establishment :  k '  Because  the  gov- 
ernment stands  with  us  in  a  paternal  relation  to  the  people, 
and  is  bound  in  .all  things  to  consider  not  merely  their 
existing  tastes,  but  the  capabilities  and  ways  of  their 
improvement  ;  because  it  has  both  an  intrinsic  competency 
and  external  means  to  amend  and  assist  their  choice  ;  because 
to  be  in  accordance  with  God's  mind  and  will  it  must  have 
a  religion,  and  because  to  be  in  accordance  with  its  con- 
science that  religion  must  be  the  truth,  as  held  by  it  under 
the  most  solemn  and  accumulated  responsibilities  ;  because 
this  is  the  only  sanctifying  and  preserving  principle  of  soci- 
ety, as  well  as  to  the  individual  that  particular  benefit 
without  which  all  others  are  worse  than  valueless  ;  we  must 
disregard  the  din  of  political  contention  and  the  pressure  of 
worldly  and  momentary  motives,  and  in  behalf  of  our  regard 
to  man,  as  well  as  our  allegiance  to  God,  maintain  among 
ourselves,  where  happily  it  still  exists,  the  union  between 
Church  and  State." 


THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  CHURCH.  103 

Macaulay  observed  that  Mr.  Gladstone's  whole  theory  in 
this  work  rested  upon  one  great  fundamental  proposition — 
viz. :  ' '  That  the  propagation  of  religious  truth  is  one  of  the 
chief  ends  of  government,  as  government, "  and  he  proceeded 
to  combat  this  theory. 

The  Quarterly  Review  says  :  "  Mr.  Gladstone  is  evidently 
not  an  ordinary  character  ;  though  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
many  others  are  now  forming  themselves  in  the  same  school 
with  him,  to  act  hereafter  upon  the  same  principles.  And 
the  highest  compliment  which  we  can  pay  him  is  to  show 
that  we  believe  him  to  be  what  a  statesman  and  philosopher 
should  be — indifferent  to  his  own  reputation  for  talents,  and 
only  anxious  for  truth  and  right. " 

Lord  Macaulay  observed  upon  the  same  question  of  style: 
"Mr.  Gladstone  seems  to  us  to  be,  in  many  respects, 
exceedingly  well  qualified  for  philosophical  investigation. 
His  mind  is  of  large  grasp  ;  nor  is  he  deficient  in  dialectic 
skill.  But  he  does  not  give  his  intellect  fair  play.  There 
is  no  want  of  light,  but  a  great  want  of  what  Bacon  would 
have  called  dry  light.  Whatever  Mr.  Gladstone  sees  is 
refracted  and  distorted  by  a  false  medium  of  passions  and 
prejudices.  His  style  bears  a  remarkable  analogy  to  his 
way  of  thinking,  and,  indeed,  exercises  great  influence  on 
his  mode  of  thinking.  His  rhetoric,  though  often  good  of 
its  kind,  darkens  and  perplexes  the  logic  which  it  should 
illustrate.  Half  his  acuteness  and  diligence,  with  a  barren 
imagination  and  a  scanty  vocabularly,  would  have  saved  him 
from  almost  all  his  mistakes.  He  has  one  gift  most  danger- 
ous to  a  speculator — a  vast  command  of  a  kind  of  language, 
grave  and  majestic,  but  of  vague  and  uncertain  import — of 
a  kind  of  language  which  affects  us  much  in  the  same  way 
in  which  the  lofty  diction  of  the  Chorus  of  Clouds  affected 
the  simple-hearted  Athenian." 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

WEDDING  BELLS. 

For  contemplation  he  and  valor  formed; 

For  softness  she  and  sweet  attractive  grace.—  John  Milton. 

But  happy  they!  the  happiest  of  their  kind, 

Whom  gentle  sta>s  unite,  and  in  one  fate 

Their  hearts,  their  fortunes,  and  their  beings  blend. 

— James  Thomson. 

There's  bliss  beyond  all  that  the  minstrel  has  told, 

When  two  that  are  linked  in  one  heavenly  tie. 
With  heart  never  changing,  and  brow  never  cold, 

Love  on  through  all  ills,  and  love  on  till  they  die. 
One  hour  of  a  passion  so  sacred  is  worth 

Whole  ages  of  heartless  and  wandering  bliss; 
And  oh!  if  there  be  an  Elysium  on  earth 

It  is  this  —  it  is  this!  — Thomas  Moore. 

' '  Of  making  many  books  there  is  no  end,  and  much  study 
is*  a  weariness  of  the  flesh."  The  labor  and  research  involved 
in  the  production  of  ' '  The  State  in  its  Relation  with  the 
Church,"  ended  in  a  partial  breakdown  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
health.  His  nervous  system  had  been  severely  tested,  and 
his  eyesight  became  seriously  impaired.  He  was  ordered 
by  his  doctors  to  give  up  reading  for  a  time  and  go  abroad. 
To  give  up  reading  was  almost  like  giving  up  breathing, 
and  wandering  about  the  sleepy  cities  of  Europe  was  little 
to  his  taste.  To  this  earnest  active  soul,  this  kind  of  thing 
was  too  much  like  dreaming  the  useful  hours  away.  But 
he  was  wisely  obedient  to  his  doctors  and  without  delay  he 
packed  his  portmanteau  and  started  for  sunny  sleepy  Italy. 
The  winter  of  1838-9  was  spent  in  the  Eternal  City.  His 
sojourn  in  Rome  was  very  delightful  from  the  beginning. 
He  formed  and  fostered  many  happy  friendships.  Among 

104 


WEDDING     BELLS.  105 

others,  he  met  with  his  chief  reviewer,  the  brilliant  versatile 
Macaulay,  and  his  great  and  admired  friend,  Edward  Man- 
ning, afterwards  Cardinal  Manning,  with  whom  he  went 
frequently  to  the  English  College  to  visit  the  already  re- 
nowned Cardinal  Wiseman.  But  these  were  not  all  the 
friends  Mr.  Gladstone  met.  The  tired  student  in  search 
of  health  and  better  powers  of  seeing,  beheld  a  vision  that 
brightened  and  beautified  his  young  life,  that  afterwards 
made  glad  and  brave  and  strong  the  midway  years  of  a  busy 
public  career,  and  then  in  mellowing  glory  filled  the  sunset 
of  his  venerable  days  with  peace  and  sacred  calm.  The 
widow  and  daughters  of  Sir  Stephen  Richard  Glynne,  of 
Hawarden  Castle,  Flintshire,  were  also  spending  this  same 
winter  in  Rome.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  an  entire  stranger 
to  the  family — the  eldest  son  of  the  Glynne 's  was  a  warm 
personal  friend  of  his.  Three  years  before  he  had  paid  a 
visit  to  Hawarden  Castle,  and  now  the  friendship  being 
renewed,  Mr.  Gladstone  became  a  frequent  and  always  a 
welcome  visitor  at  the  Glynne's.  Lady  Glynne  had  twTo 
daughters  and  they  were  passing  fair.  Queen  Victoria 
writing  to  a  member  of  the  Glynne  family  says  that  when 
she  was  a  girl,  she  remembered  hearing  people  about  her 
talking  of  the  "two  beautiful  Miss  Glynne's."  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  also  greatly  impressed  with  the  beauty  of  these 
young  ladies,  especially  of  the  elder  one,  Miss  Catharine 
Glynne,  admiration  grew  into  esteem,  and  esteem  developed 
into  love.  So  the  old,  old  story  is  repeated;  but  not  the 
silly  story  of  "love  at  first  sight" — a  thoughtless  visionary 
fascinated  by  the  varied  splendors  of  a  butterfly's  wing — all 
worship  and  adoration  till  the  next  butterfly  comes  along — 
but  the  story  of  a  love  that  had  time  to  be  born  and  grow; 
and  taking  deep  root,  blossomed  in  growing  beauty  and 
fragrance  with  the  roses  of  half  a  hundred  years. 

Mr.  Gladstone  and  Miss  Catharine  Glynne  became  engaged. 
What  a  grand  place   Rome   is  for   courtship!     How   this 


106  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

happy  pair  would  wander  about  the  palaces  of  the  Caesars;, 
they  richer,  and  a  thousand  times  more  happy  than  the 
Emperors  of  old  renown!  What  opportunities  of  quiet 
strolling  these  scenes  of  the  dead  and  buried  past  afforded! 
The  majestic  Coliseum  in  the  glory  of  noontide  or  under  the 
paler  light  of  the  shimmering  moonbeams!  He  who  has  not 
seen  the  Coliseum  by  moonlight  has  not  seen  it  in  its  most 
solemn  sacred  beauty.  Doubtless  they  wandered  along  the 
Appian  Way,  and  investigated  the  Mamertine  prison  where 
Paul  "the  prisoner  of  the  Lord  abode,"  and  went  down  into 
the  Catacombs  many  and  many  a  time.  And  what  historic 
stories  Mr.  Gladstone  would  tell,  until  Miss  Glynne  wondered 
that  so  young  a  gentleman  should  have  learned  so  much.  It 
was  really  very  wonderful !  When  next  the  honeysuckles  of 
July  were  twining  round  the  cottage  homes  of  the  peasants 
of  Ha  warden  ' '  they  two  were  wed,  and  merrily  rang  the 
bells  !  "  On  the  25th  of  July,  1839,  the  wedding  was  cele- 
brated at  Hawarden.  It  was  a  double  wedding.  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  married  to  Miss  Catharine  Glynne  ;  Miss  Mary  Glynne 
was  married  at  the  same  time  to  the  Fourth  Lord  Lyttelton. 
To  say  that  this  union  of  Mr.  Gladstone  to  Miss  Glynne  was 
an  ideal  marriage,  is  only  stating  a  truth  to  which  fifty 
eventful  years  have  borne  beautiful  accumulating  testimony. 

Mrs.  Gladstone  was  the  heiress  of  Hawarden,  her  brother 
— Mr.  Gladstone's  old  time  friend — Sir  Stephen  Glynne, 
the  ninth  and  last  Baronet  of  the  line,  being  childless.  The 
young  couple  were  welcomed  to  the  Castle  of  Hawarden  as 
their  home,  and  at  the  death  of  Sir  Stephen  it  passed  into 
their  sole  inheritance. 

Their  union  has  been  blessed  with  eight  children.  Of 
the  four  sons  the  eldest,  William  Henry,  sat  in  one  House 
of  Commons  as  Member  for  Whitby,  in  another  represent- 
ing East  Worcestershire.  A  man  of  gentle  and  retiring 
disposition,  he  did  not  take  kindly  to  the  turmoil  of  politics, 
and  when  opportunity  presented  itself,  gratefully  with- 


MRS.  GLADSTONE. 


WEDDING    BELLS.  107 

drew.  The  second  son  is  Rector  of  Hawarden.  In  1875 
the  torrent  of  abuse  to  which  Mr.  Gladstone  was  subjected 
took,  in  a  somewhat  obscure  London  weekly  paper,  the  line 
of  accusation  that  the  ex-Premier  had  presented  his  son, 
ordained  in  1870,  to  one  of  the  richest  and  easiest  livings  of 
the  Church.  This  was  a  statement  that  might  well  have 
been  passed  over  in  silence.  It  touched  Mr.  Gladstone  to  the 
quick.  He  wrote  :  "This  easy  living  entailed  the  charge  of 
8,000  people  scattered  over  17,000  acres,  and  fast  increasing 
in  number.  The  living  is  not  in  the  gift  of  the  Crown. 
I  did  not  present  him  to  the  living  or  recommend  him  to 
be  presented.  He  was  not  ordained  in  1870.  My  rela- 
tions," he  proudly  and  truthfully  added,  "have  no  special 
cause  to  thank  me  for  any  advice  given  by  me  to  the 
•Sovereign  in  the  matter  of  Church  patronage." 

His  third  son,  Henry,  followed  the  early  family  traditions 
by  entering  upon  commercial  pursuits,  spending  some  years 
in  India.  He  married  the  daughter  of  Lord  Rendel,  and 
still  stands  apart  from  politics.  The  only  born  politician 
among  the  sons  is  the  youngest.  Mr.  Herbert  Gladstone 
made  his  first  appearance  in  the  political  arena  by  gallantly 
contesting  Middlesex  in  April,  1880.  Defeated  there,  he 
Avas  returned  for  Leeds  two  months  later,  and  still  represents 
a  Leeds  Division  in  the  House  of  Commons.  For  a  while 
he  acted  as  Private  Secretary  to  his  father  the  Premier, 
though  he  received  no  salary.  He  became  in  succession  a 
Lord  of  the  Treasury  and  Financial  Secretary  to  the  War 
Office,  the  Secretaryship  to  the  Home  Office  being  the  high- 
est post  to  which  his  omnipotent  father  promoted  him. 
Upon  Mr.  Gladstone's  retirement  in  1894,  colleagues  who 
had  long  worked  with  Mr.  Herbert  Gladstone  made  haste  to 
do  him  fuller  justice,  promoting  him  to  the  position  of  First 
Commissioner  of  Works. 

A  singularly  modest  record  this  of  the  family  of  an  illus- 
trious statesman,  four  times  Chief  Minister  of  a  nation  whose 


108  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

wealth  is  illimitable,  whose,  power  reaches  to  the  ends  of  the 
earth.  ' '  We  are,  happily,  so  accustomed  in  England  to  find 
our  statesmen  free  from  the  charge  of  nepotism,  that  we 
take  Mr.  Gladstone's  innocence  as  a  matter  of  course. "  But 
few  more  suggestive  chapters  in  his  history  could  be  written 
than  that  which  shows  the  son  of  a  man,  who  has  made  many 
bishops,  rector  of  the  family  parish  in  Flintshire  ;  one  of 
his  daughters  married  to  a  schoolmaster ;  a  second  a  school- 
mistress, whilst  another  of  his  sons  long  sat  at  an  office  desk. 

When  not  in  London  engaged  in  Ministerial  or  political 
business  Mr.  Gladstone  has  dwelt  among  his  own  people  in 
his  Flintshire  home.  Of  Hawarden  Castle,  its  history  and 
its  belongings,  we  have  the  pleasure  of  presenting  a  graphic 
and  authoritative  .account  from  the  pen  of  the  late  W.  H. 
Gladstone. 

The  estate  of  Hawarden  was  purchased  by  Serjeant 
Glynne  from  the  agents  of  Sequestration  after  the  execution 
of  James  Earl  of  Derby  in  1651.  It  came  first  into  the 
Stanley  family  in  1443,  when  it  was  granted  by  Henry  VI. 
to  Sir  Thomas  Stanley,  Comptroller  of  his  Household. 
This  grant  was  recalled  in  1450,  but  in  1454  it  was  restored 
to  Sir  Thomas,  afterwards  Lord  Stanley.  After  his  death 
it  descended  to  his  second  wife,  Margaret  Countess  of  Rich- 
mond ;  on  whose  decease  it  returned  to  Thomas  Earl  of 
Derby,  and  remained  in  that  family  till  1651. 

On  the  Restoration,  when  the  Commons  rejected  the  Bill 
for  restoring  the  estates  of  those  lords  which  had  been  alien- 
ated in  the  late  usurpation,  Charles  Earl  of  Derby  com- 
pounded with  Serjeant  Glynne  for  the  property  of  Hawarden 
and  granted  it  to  him  and  his  heirs. 

The  old  Castle  was  possessed  by  the  Parliament  in  1643, 
being  betrayed  to  Sir  William  Brereton,  but  was  besieged 
soon  after  by  the  Royalists,  and  surrendered  to  Sir  Michael 
Earnley,  December  5th,  1643.  The  Royalists  held  it  till 
1645,  when  it  was  taken  by  General  Mytton.  It  was  soon 


RUINS  OF  THE  OLD  CASTLE,  HAWAKDEN. 


WEDDING    BELLS.  109 

after  dismantled,  and  its  further  destruction  effected  by  its 
owner,  Sir  William  Glynne,  in  1665. 

There  is  no  tradition  of  the  Earls  of  Derby  making  the 
Castle  their  residence  subsequent  to  the  death  of  the  Count- 
ess of  Richmond  ;  but  it  is  certain  that  it  was  not  rendered 
untenable  till  dismantled  by  order  of  the  Parliament  in  1647. 

The  Glynne  family  were  first  heard  of  at  Glyn  Llyvon,  in 
Carnarvonshire,  in  1567.  A  knighthood  was  conferred  on 
Sir  William,  father  of  Serjeant,  afterwards  Chief  Justice, 
Glynne.  Sir  William,  son  of  the  Chief  Justice  (who  also 
sat  in  Parliament  for  Carnarvonshire  in  1660),  was  created 
a  Baronet  in  1661,  during  his  father's  lifetime.  About  this 
date  the  family  became  connected  with  Oxfordshire,  and  did 
not  reside  at  Ha  warden  till  1727,  when  Sir  Stephen,  second 
Baronet,  built  a  house  there.  A  new  one  was,  however, 
built  shortly  after,  in  1752,  by  Sir  John  Glynne,  who,  by 
an  alliance  with  the  family  of  Ravenscroft,  acquired  the 
adjoining  property  of  Broadlane.  This  house,  then  called 
Broadlane  House,  is  the  kernel  of  the  present  residence 
known  as  Hawarden  Castle.  Sir  John  Glynne  (sixth  Baro- 
net) applied  himself  to  improving  and  developing  the  prop- 
erty on  a  large  scale  by  inclosing,  draining,  and  planting ; 
and  under  him  the  estate  grew  to  its  present  aspect  and 
dimensions.  (The  park  contains  some  200  acres ;  the 
plantations  cover  about  500.  The  whole  estate  is  upwards 
of  7,000.)  In  1809  the  house,  built  of  brick,  was  much 
enlarged  and  cased  in  stone  in  the  castellated  style,  and 
under  the  name  it  now  bears.  Further  improvements  were 
made  by  the  late  Sir  Stephen  Glynne  in  1831.  The  new 
block,  however,  containing  Mr.  Gladstone's  study,  was  not 
added  till  1864. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  room  has  three  windows  and  two  fire- 
places and  is  completely  lined  with  bookcases.  There  are 
three  writing-tables  in  it.  The  first  Mr.  Gladstone  uses  for 
political,  the  second  for  literary  work  (Homeric  and  others) 


HO  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE 

when  engaged  upon  such.  The  third  is  occupied  by  Mrs. 
Gladstone.  The  room  has  busts  and  other  likenesses  of 
Sidney  Herbert,  Duke  of  Newcastle,  Tennyson,  Canning, 
Cobden,  Homer,  and  others.  In  a  corner  may  be  seen  a 
specimen  of  an  axe  from  Nottingham,  the  blade  of  which  is 
singularly  long  and  narrow,  and  contrasts  strongly  with  the 
American  pattern,  to  which  Mr.  Gladstone  is  much  addicted. 

Mr.  Gladstone  sold  his  collections  of  china  and  pictures 
in  1874,  retaining,  however,  those  of  ivories  and  antique 
jewels,  exhibited  at  South  Kensington  and  elsewhere. 

His  library  contains  over  10,000  volumes,  and  is  very 
rich  in  theology.  Separate  departments  are  assigned  in  it 
to  Homer,  Shakespeare,  and  Dante. 

Chief  portraits  in  the  house  are  those  of  Sir  Kenelm 
Digby,  by  Vandyck,  an  ancestor  of  Honora  Conway,  Sir 
John  Glynne's  wife ;  Lady  Lucy  Stanley,  daughter  of 
Thomas  Earl  of  Northumberland,  mother  to  Sir  K.  Digby's 
wife ;  Jane  Warburton,  afterwards  Duchess  of  Argyll, 
great-granddaughter  to  Chief  Justice  Glynne  ;  Sir  William 
Glynne,  first  Baronet,  ascribed  to  Sir  Peter  Lely  ;  Chief 
Justice  Glynne  as  a  young  man,  and  another  in  his  judicial 
robes  ;  Lady  Sandys,  grandmother  to  Sir  William  Glynne's 
wife  ;  Lady  Wheler,  daughter  of  Sir  Stephen  Glynne  ;  Sir 
John  Glynne  with  Honora  Conway  his  wife,  holding  a  draw- 
ing of  the  new  house  at  Broadlane  ;  Sir  Robert  Williams, 
of  Penrhyn,  who  married  a  daughter  of  the  Chief  Justice  ; 
Catherine  Grenville,  afterwards  Lady  Braybrooke  and 
mother  of  Lady  Glynne ;  Mrs.  Gladstone,  by  Saye  ;  Lady 
Lyttelton,  by  Saye  ;  the  late  Sir  Stephen,  by  Roden  ;  Mr. 
Gladstone's  own  portrait,  by  W.  B.  Richmond  ;  Viscountess 
Vane,  nee  Hawes  ;  Charles  I.,  Henrietta  Maria  his  Queen, 
and  Charles  II. ,  copies  from  Vandyck  ;  and  several  others, 
one  attributed  to  Gainsborough.  There  are  busts  of  Pitt, 
Sir  John  Glynne,  Rev.  Henry  Glynne,  Mrs.  Gladstone,  Mr. 
Gladstone  by  Marochetti,  and  other  statuary. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

AT    WOKK    IN    EARNEST  I    REPEAL    OF    THE    CORN    LAWS. 

Oh,  noble  soul!  which  neither  gold,  nor  love  nor  scorn  can  bend. — 

Charles  Kingsley. 

Mr.  Gladstone  is  evidently  not  an  ordinary  character.  And  the 
highest  compliment  which  we  can  pay  him  is  to  show  that  we  believe 
him  to  be  what  a  statesman  and  philosopher  should  be — indifferent 
to  his  own  reputation  for  talents,  and  only  anxious  for  truth  and 
right. — Quarterly  Review. 

Be  noble  !  and  the  nobleness  that  lies 
In  other  men,  sleeping  but  never  dead, 
Will  rise  in  majesty  to  meet  thine  own ; 
Then  wilt  thou  see  it  gleam  in  many  eyes, 
Then  will  pure  light  around  thy  path  be  shed. 
And  thou  wilt  never  more  be  sad  and  lone. 

— James  Russell  Lowell. 

In  the  year  1843,  Mr.  Gladstone,  at  the  age  of  thirty-three, 
became  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade,  on  the  retirement  of 
Lord  Ripon  from  the  Board  of  Control.  The  following  year 
Mr.  Gladstone  took  the  remarkable  course  of  resigning  his 
position,  to  the  great  annoyance  of  his  party,  on  account  of 
what  they  had  regarded  as  an  eccentric  scruple.  Sir  Robert 
Peel  proposed  to  increase  the  grant  which  government  was 
in  the  habit  of  making  Maynooth  College,  an  establishment 
ior  the  education  of  the  Roman  Catholic  priesthood.  In 
the  course  of  the  debate  on  the  address  Mr.  Gladstone 
explained  his  reasons  for  this  step,  and  set  a  good  deal  of 
speculation  at  rest  by  the  announcement  that  his  resignation 
was  due  solely  to  the  government  intentions  with  regard  to 
Maynooth  College.  The  contemplated  increase  in  the  May- 
nooth endowment  and  the  establishment  of  nonsectarian  col- 

111 


112  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

leges  were  at  variance  with  the  views  he  had  written  and 

o 

uttered  upon  the  relations  of  the  Church  and  the  State.  ' '  I  am 
sensible  how  fallible  my  judgment  is,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone, 
' '  and  how  easily  I  might  have  erred  ;  but  still  it  has  been 
my  conviction  that,  although  I  was  not  to  fetter  my  judg- 
ment as  a  member  of  Parliament  by  a  reference  to  abstract 
theories,  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  absolutely  due  to 
the  public  and  due  to  myself  that  I  should,  so  far  as  in  me 
lay,  place  myself  in  a  position  to  form  an  opinion  upon  a 
matter  of  so  great  importance,  that  should  not  only  be 
actually  free  from  all  bias  or  leaning  with  respect  to  any 
,  consideration  whatsoever,  but  an  opinion  that  should  be 
unsuspected.  On  that  account  I  have  taken  a  course  most 
painful  to  myself  in  respect  to  personal  feelings,  and  have 
separated  myself  from  men  with  whom,  and  under  whom,  I 
have  long  acted  in  public  life,  and  of  whom  I  am  bound  to 
say,  although  I  have  now  no  longer  the  honor  of  serving 
my  most  gracious  Sovereign,  that  I  continue  to  regard  them 
with  unaltered  sentiments,  both  of  public  regard  and  private 
attachment. " 

Mr.  Gladstone  added  that  he  was  not  prepared  to  war 
against  the  religious  measures  of  his  friend,  Sir  Robert 
Peel.  He  would  not  prejudge  such  questions,  but  would 
give  them  calm  and  deliberate  consideration.  A  high  tribute 
was  paid  to  the  retiring  Minister  both  by  Lord  John  Russell 
and  the  Premier.  The  latter  avowed  the  highest  respect 
and  admiration  for  Mr.  Gladstone's  character  and  abilities  ; 
admiration  only  equaled  by  regard  for  his  private  character. 
He  had  been  most  unwilling  to  lose  one  whom  he  regarded 
.as  capable  of  the  highest  and  most  eminent  services. 

This  is  one  of  the  episodes  in  Mr.  Gladstone's  career  that 
justify  Mr.  Stead  in  describing  him  as  having  a  Quixotic 
conscience. 

The  fifth  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  found  England 
beset  with  anxiety  and  peril.  If  the  cloud  in  her  fair  sky 


•    AT  WORK  IN  EARNEST:  REPEAL  OF  THE  CORN  LAWS.    113 

was  "  no  bigger  than  a  man's  hand,"  it  was  the  herald  of  ft 
wild  and  pitiless  storm.  The  young  Queen,  who  had  been 
moved  to  "gracious  tears  "  as  she  heard  the  wild  plaudits 
of  her  loyal  and  enthusiastic  subjects  on  the  occasion  of  her 
coronation,  soon  became  aware  of  very  distinct  undertones 
of  discontent  on  the  part  of  the  great  masses  of  the  people. 
The  toilers  of  the  land  in  many  thousands  ' '  began  to  be  in 
want."  Wages  were  dropping  lower  and  lower,  and  the 
necessities  of  life  were  rising  higher  and  higher  in  price. 

Poverty  in  its  saddest  forms  stood  knocking  at  hundreds 
of  doors.  Trade  was  hopelessly  bad.  Firms  in  scores,  in 
all  the  large  cities,  counted  in  the  general  estimate  to  be  "as 
safe  as  the  bank,"  became  bankrupt.  The  universal  confi- 
dence gave  way.  There  had  been  four  or  five  bad  harvests 
in  succession.  Ireland  had,  of  course,  her  full  measure  of 
these  sorrows.  Potato-rot,  famine  and  plague  threatened 
all  her  borders.  Far  and  near,  through  all  the  British  isles, 
there  was  heard  the  cry  of  hard  times.  The  old  wail  of 
the  prophet  Jeremiah  was  heard  throughout  the  land : 
' '  The  children  cry  for  bread  and  no  man  breaketh  it  unto 
them." 

The  distress  increased  on  every  hand.  In  all  the  large 
cities  of  England  thousands  of  people  were  largely,  and  very 
many  wholly  dependent  on  the  charities  the  Poor  Law  ad- 
ministered. In  such  towns  as  Coventry  and  Nottingham 
every  third  or  fifth  person  you  met  was  to  some  extent  a 
pauper.  Women  pawned  their  wedding  rings  to  keep  their 
children  from  starving.  The  taxes  on  human  food  were 
enormous  and  iniquitous.  In  the  interests  of  the  wealthy 
landlords  corn  was  taxed  at  such  a  rate  that  the  poor  and 
their  children  had  to  starve.  Of  course  England  was  not 
able  to  grow  corn  enough  to  supply  her  own  great  family, 
but  there  was  corn  enough  and  to  spare  waiting  at  the  gates 
of  the  nation,  but  it  was  not  allowed  to  enter  until  it  was 
so  highly  taxed  that  the  interests  of  the  landlords  were 


114:  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

conserved  whatever  became  of  the  hapless  toiling  millions. 
The  condition  of  affairs  was  threatening  and  perilous.  It 
was  averred  that  almost  the  whole  cost  of  government  was 
gained  by  taxes  on  raw  materials  and  human  food.  It  was 
publicly  stated,  without  denial  by  those  who  would  gladly 
have  made  the  denial  if  they  could,  that  the  cost  of  the 
government  reached  the  vast  sum  of  $120,000,000,  and  that 
this  sum  was  obtained  in  the  following  manner:  $100,000,- 
000  were  gained  by  taxes  on  seventeen  articles  alone,  these 
articles  comprising  mainly  food  and  raw  material;  that  for 
the  balance  of  $20,000,000  not  less  than  seventeen  hundred 
articles  were  taxed.  The  problem  before  the  English  nation 
was  an  exceedingly  difficult  one.  But  it  was  a  problem  that 
must  be  met.  Something  had  to  be  done,  the  people  could 
not  be  left  to  starve  and  die.  The  question  of  the  taxation 
of  human  food  became  the  one  absorbing  theme  of  discussion. 
England  has  always  been  celebrated  for  its  various  and 
multitudinous  taxes.  The  conviction  was  taking  deep  root 
that  it  was  a  blunder  and  a  crime,  an  iniquity  and  a  shame 
to  tax  human  food.  In  a  vigorous  speech  delivered  in  Drury 
Lane  theater,  John  Bright  uttered  these  impressive  words: 

"  What  was  the  state  of  the  population  of  this  country? 
It  was  so  bad  that  when  he  had  been  abroad  he  had  been 
ashamed  to  acknowledge  that  he  was  an  Englishman.  It 
was  said  of  the  celebrated  writer,  Charles  Dickens,  that  he 
had  described  low  life  so  well  that  he  must  have  lived  in  a 
workhouse.  The  reply  was  that  he  had  lived  in  England, 
which  was  one  great  workhouse.  The  country  was  filled 
with  paupers,  and  we  were  now  devouring  each  other.  In 
Leeds  there  were  40,000  persons  subsisting  on  charity.  A 
friend  of  his  was  then  in  the  room  who  told  him  that  in 
Sheffield  there  were  no  less  than  12,000  paupers,  and  that 
there  were  as  many  more  who  were  as  badly  off  as  paupers. " 

Concerted  action  in  the  direction  of  the  repeal  of  these 
iniquitous  taxes  on  the  bread  of  the  poor,  seemed  the  only 


AT  WORK  IN  EARNEST:  REPEAL  OF  THE  CORN  LAWS.    115 

possible  way  out  of  the  difficulty.  We  quote  a  passage 
from  Justin  McCarthy's  "History  of  Our  Own  Times," 
dealing  with  this  threatening  episode  in  English  life  in  the 
early  forties : 

"A  movement  against  the  Corn  Laws  began  in  London. 
An  Anti-Corn-Law  Association  on  a  small  scale  was  formed. 
Its  list  of  members  bore  the  names  of  more  than  twenty 
members  of  Parliament,  and  for  a  time  the  society  had  a 
look  of  vigor  about  it.  It  came  to  nothing,  however.  Lon- 
don has  never  been  found  an  effective  nursery  of  agitation. 
It  is  too  large  to  have  any  central  interest  or  source  of 
action.  It  is  too  dependent  socially  and  economically  on 
the  patronage  of  the  higher  and  wealthier  classes.  A  new 
centre  of  operations  soon  had  to  be  sought,  and  various 
causes  combined  to  make  Lancashire  the  proper  place.  In 
the  year  1838  the  town  of  Bolton-le-Moors,  in  Lancashire, 
was  the  victim  of  a  terrible  commercial  crisis.  Thirty  out 
of  the  fifty  manufacturing  establishments  which  the  town 
contained  were  closed  ;  nearly  a  fourth  of  all  the  houses  of 
business  were  closed  and  actually  deserted  ;  and  more  than 
five  thousand  workmen  were  without  homes  or  means  of 
subsistence.  All  the  intelligence  and  energy  of  Lancashire 
was  roused.  One  obvious  guarantee  against  starvation  was 
cheap  bread,  and  cheap  bread  meant  of  course  the  abolition 
of  the  Corn  Laws,  for  these  laws  were  constructed  on  the 
principle  that  it  was  necessary  to  keep  bread  dear.  A  meet- 
ing was  held  in  Manchester  to  consider  measures  necessary 
to  be  adopted  for  bringing  about  the  complete  repeal  of  these 
laws.  The  Manchester  Chamber  of  Commerce  adopted  a 
petition  to  Parliament  against  the  Corn  Laws.  The  Anti- 
Corn-Law  agitation  had  been  fairly  launched. 

' '  The  real  leader  of  the  movement  was  Mr.  Richard  Cobden. 
Mr.  Cobden  was  a  man  belonging  to  the  yeoman  class.  He 
had  received  but  a  moderate  education.  His  father  dying 
while  the  great  Free  Trader  was  still  young,  Richard  Cobden 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

was  taken  in  charge  by  an  uncle,  who  had  a  wholesale  ware- 
house in  the  City  of  London,  and  who  gave  him  employment 
there.  Cobden  afterwards  became  a  partner  in  a  Manchester 
printed  cotton  factory;  and  he  traveled  occasionally  on  the 
commercial  interests  of  this  establishment.  He  had  a  great 
liking  for  travel  ;  but  not  by  any  means  as  the  ordinary 
tourist  travels  ;  the  interest  of  Cobden  was  not  in  scenery, 
or  in  art,  or  in  ruins,  but  in  men.  He  studied  the  condition 
of  countries  with  a  view  to  the  manner  in  which  it  affected 
the  men  and  women  of  the  present,  and  through  them  was  likely 
to  affect  the  future.  On  everything  that  he  saw  he  turned 
a  quick  and  intelligent  eye  ;  he  saw  for  himself  and  thought 
for  himself.  Wherever  he  went  he  wanted  to  learn  some- 
thing. He  had  in  abundance  that  peculiar  faculty  which 
some  great  men  of  widely  different  stamp  from  him  and 
from  each  other  have  possessed ;  of  which  Goethe  frankly 
boasted,  and  which  Mirabeau  had  more  largely  than  he  was 
always  willing  to  acknowledge ;  the  faculty  which  exacts 
from  every  one  with  whom  its  owner  comes  into  contact 
some  contribution  to  his  stock  of  information  and  to  his 
advantage.  Cobden  could  learn  something  from  everybody. 
It  is  doubtful  whether  he  ever  came  even  into  momentary 
acquaintance  with  any  one  whom  he  did  not  compel  to  yield 
him  something  in  the  way  of  information.  He  traveled 
very  widely  for  a  time  when  traveling  was  more  difficult 
work  than  it  is  at  present.  He  made  himself  familiar  with 
most  of  the  countries  of  Europe,  with  many  parts  of  the 
East,  and  what  was  then  a  rare  accomplishment,  with  the 
United  States  and  Canada.  He  did  not  make  the  familiar 
grand  tour  and  then  dismiss  the  places  he  had  seen  from  his 
active  memory.  He  studied  them  and  visited  many  of  them 
again  to  compare  early  with  later  impressions.  This  was 
in  itself  an  education  of  the  highest  value  for  the  career  he 
proposed  to  pursue.  When  he  was  about  thirty  years  of 
age  he  began  to  acquire  'a  certain  reputation  as  the  author, 


ALBERT  EDWARD,  PRINCE  OF  WALES. 


Dowx  WITH  EVERYTHING! 


AT  WORK  IN  EARNEST:  REPEAL  OF  THE  CORN  LAWS.    117 

of  pamphlets  directed  against  some  of  the  pet  doctrines  of 
old-fashioned  statesmanship  ;  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe ; 
the  necessity  of  maintaining  a  State  Church  in  Ireland  ;  the 
importance  of  allowing  no  European  quarrel  to  go  on  without 
England's  intervention  ;  and  similar  dogmas.  Mr.  Cobden's 
opinions  then  were  very  much  as  they  continued  to  the  day 
of  his  death.  He  seemed  to  have  come  to  the  maturity  of 
his  convictions  all  at  once,  and  to  have  passed  through  no 
further  change  either  of  growth  or  of  decay.  But  whatever 
might  be  said  then  or  now  of  the  doctrines  he  maintained, 
there  could  be  only  one  opinion  as  to  the  skill  and  force 
which  upheld  them  with  pen  as  well  as  tongue.  The  tongue, 
however,  was  his  best  weapon.  If  oratory  were  a  business 
and  not  an  art — that  is,  if  its  test  were  its  success  rather 
than  its  form — then  it  might  be  contended  reasonably  enough 
that  Mr.  Cobden  was  one  of  the  greatest  orators  England 
has  ever  known.  Nothing  could  exceed  the  persuasiveness 
of  his  style.  His  manner  was  simple,  sweet,  and  earnest. 
It  was  persuasive,  but  it  had  not  the  sort  of  persuasiveness 
which  is  merely  a  better  kind  of  plausibility.  It  persuaded 
by  convincing.  It  was  transparently  sincere. 

Side  by  side  with  Richard  Cobden  stood  ^the  eloquent 
John  Bright.  These  two  were  the  great  apostles  of  this 
humane  crusade.  It  will  be  interesting  to  record  here  the 
occasions  on  which  these  great  Tribunes  of  the  people  first 
become  associated  in  this  great  work.  Mr.  Bright  says  : 

"The  first  time  I  became  acquainted  with  Mr.  Cobden 
was  in  connection  with  the  great  question  of  education.  I 
went  over  to  Manchester  to  call  upon  him  and  invite  him  to 
come  to  Rochdale  to  speak  at  a  meeting  about  to  be  held  in 
the  school-room  of  the  Baptist  Chapel  in  West  street.  I 
found  him  in  his  counting-house.  I  told  him  what  I  wanted; 
his  countenance  lighted  up  with  pleasure  to  find  that  others 
were  working  in  the  same  cause.  He  without  hesitation 
agreed  to  come.  He  came  and  he  spoke;  and  though  he 


118  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

was  then  so  young  a  speaker,  yet  the  qualities  of  his  speech 
were  such  as  remained  with  him  so  long  as  he  was  able  to 
speak  at  all — clearness,  logic,  a  conversational  eloquence,  a 
persuasiveness  which,  when  combined  with  the  absolute 
truth  there  was  in  his  eye  and  in  his  countenance,  became  a 
power  it  was  almost  impossible  to  resist. " 

Still  more  remarkable  is  the  description  Mr.  Bright 'has 
given  of  Cobden's  first  appeal  to  him  to  join  in  the  agita- 
tion for  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws : 

"I  was  in  Leamington,  and  Mr.  Cobden  called  on  me. 
I  was  then  in  the  depths  of  grief — I  may  almost  say  of  despair, 
for  the  light  and  sunshine  of  my  house  had  been  extin- 
guished. All  that  was  left  on  earth  of  my  young  wife, 
except  the  memory  of  a  sainted  life  and  a  too  brief  happi- 
ness, was  lying  still  and  cold  in  the  chamber  above  us. 
Mr.  Cobden  called  on  me  as  his  friend,  and  addressed  me,  as 
you  may  suppose,  with  words  of  condolence.  After  a  time 
he  looked  up  and  said  :  '  There  are  thousands  and  thousands 
of  homes  in  England  at  this  moment  where  wives  and 
mothers  and  children  are  dying  of  hunger.  Now  when  the 
first  paroxysm  of  your  grief  is  passed,  I  would  advise  you 
to  come  with  me,  and  we  will  never  rest  until  the  Corn 
Laws  are  repealed. ' ' 

Never  was  more  earnest  work  done  in  England  than  by 
that  heroic  company  of  men  who  vowed  that  they  would 
give  no  sleep  to  eyes  and  no  rest  to  their  eyelids  till  the 
taxes  were  removed  from  the  bread  of  the  poor.  Addresses 
were  delivered  all  over  England,  Ireland  and  Scotland. 
Tons  of  literature  on  the  subject  were  distributed  far  and 
wide.  For  five  years  the  work  of  education  went  on  in  the 
country,  and  then  after  three  years'  struggle' in  the  Houses 
of  Parliament  the  victory  was  won.  Forced,  as  it  has  been 
often  said,  by  the  famine  in  Ireland,  Sir  Eobert  Peel  boldly 
proposed  to  his  cabinet  to  remove  all  the  restrictions  on  the 
importation  of  human  food.  His  cabinet  of  course  refused 


AT  WORK  IN  EARNEST:  REPEAL  OF  THE  CORN  LAWS.    119 

to  support  him  in  this  matter.  In  November  of  1845,  Lord 
John  Russell  declared  himself  a  convert  to  Free  Trade. 
This  moved  Sir  Robert  Peel  once  more  to  urge  his  cabinet 
to  accept  the  inevitable.  They  were  as  stubborn  as  ever, 
and  Sir  Robert  Peel  resigned.  The  Queen  sent  for  Lord 
John  Russell,  but  he  declined  the  honor  of  forming  a  gov- 
ernment. Sir  Robert  Peel  was  recalled,  and  he  at  once 
proceeded  to  construct  a  cabinet  favorable  to  the  repeal  of 
the  Corn  Laws.  In  this  cabinet  Mr.  Gladstone  appears. 
He  was  given  the  position  of  Secretary  of  State  for  the 
Colonies.  In  the  work  of  repeal  Mr.  Gladstone  became 
Sir  Robert's  right-hand  man. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  in  Parliament  during  these  stirring 
times.  Next  to  the  Premier  in  the  Cabinet,  and  one  of  the 
greatest  forces  at  work  bringing  about  the  triumph  of  the 
cause  of  the  suffering  poor,  the  House  and  the  Country 
were  deprived  of  his  matchless  eloquence  in  this  grand  bat- 
tle for  free  and  untaxed  bread.  The  Duke  of  Newcastle 
who  was  an  implacable  Protectionist,  was  resolved  on 
opposing  Mr.  Gladstone  should  he  seek  re-election  for  New- 
ark after  accepting  office  in  a  Free  Trade  government.  Mr. 
Gladstone  did  not  contest  the  borough  and  remained  without 
a  seat  in  Parliament  till  the  general  election  of  1847. 

Mr.  Gladstone  had  become  a  thorough  Cobdenite  in  the 
best  sense  of  the  term.  His  reverence  and  regard  for  the 
man  was  deep  and  intense.  Speaking  of  him  he  said :  "I 
do  not  know  that  there  is  in  any  period  a  man  whose  public 
career  and  life  were  nobler  or  more  admirable.  Of  course 
I  except  Washington.  Washington,  to  my  mind,  is  the 
purest  figure  in  history. " 

On  the  morning  of  the  16th  of  May,  1846,  at  half  past 
four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  the  Bill  for  the  repeal  of  the 
Corn  Laws  was  passed  by  a  majority  of  ninety-eight.  In 
the  closing  scene  of  this  great  conflict  Mr.  Disraeli  took 
part,  and  poured  that  memorable  tirade  of  bitterness  against 


120  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Sir  Robert  Peel.  He  said  that  Sir  Robert  Peel  throughout 
his  political  life  had  traded  on  the  intelligence  of  others ; 
that  his  career  was  a  great  appropriation  clause  ;  that  he 
was  the  burglar  of  other  men's  intellects ;  that  in  our  whole 
history  there  was  no  statesman  who  had  committed  so  much 
petty  larceny  on  so  great  a  scale  *  *  *  *  He  had 
bought  his  party  on  the  cheapest  and  had  sold  it  on  the 
dearest  terms. 

The  merciless  critic  was  answered  by  Lord  John  Russell 
in  that  terse,  well  remembered  phrase  in  which  he  pointed 
out  that  Mr.  Disraeli  was  much  happier  in  invective  than 
in  argument,  and  that  his  speech  had  little  relation  to  the 
bill  before  the  house. 

Sir  Robert  Peel  resigned.  Mr.  Cobden  said  in  his  own 
trenchant,  homely  eloquence,  "He  has  lost  office,  but  he 
has  gained  a  country."  The  closing  words  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel  on  retiring  from  office  deserve  to  be  held  in  sacred 
remembrance.  After  a  generous  testimony  to  the  part  Mr. 
Cobden  had  played  in  the  battle  for  untaxed  bread,  Sir 
Robert  concludes : 

' '  I  shall  surrender  forever,  severely  censured,  I  fear,  by 
many  honorable  gentlemen  who  from  no  interested  motive, 
have  adhered  to  the  principles  of  protection  as  important  to 
the  welfare  and  interest  of  the  country  ;  I  shall  leave  a  name 
execrated  by  every  monopolist  who  from  less  honorable  mo- 
tives maintained  protection  for  his  own  individual  benefit, 
but  it  may  be  that  I  shall  leave  a  name  sometimes  remem- 
bered with  expressions  of  good  will  in  those  places  which 
were  the  abodes  of  men  whose  lot  it  is  to  labor,  and  to  earn 
their  daily  bread  by  the  sweat  of  their  brow — a  name  re- 
membered with  expressions  of  good  will,  when  they  shall 
recreate  their  exhausted  strength  with  abundant  and  untaxed 
food,  the  sweeter  because  it  is  no  longer  leavened  by  a  sense 
of  injustice. " 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  BRITISH  HOUSE  OF    COMMONS A  SKETCH. 

When  any  of  the  four  pillars,  of  government  are  mainly  shaken, 
or  weakened — which  are  religion,  justice,  counsel  and  treasure — men 
had  better  pray  for  fair  weather  — LQrd  Bacon. 

Neither  Montaigne  in  writing  his  essays,  nor  Descartes  in  building 
new  worlds,  nor  Burnet  in  framing  an  antediluvian  earth,  no,  nor 
Newton  is  discovering  and  establishing  the  true  laws  of  nature  on 
experiment  and  a  sublime  geometry,  felt  more  intellectual  joys  than 
he  feels  who  is  a  real  patriot,  who  bends  all  the  force  of  his  under- 
standing, and  directs  all  his  thoughts  and  actions,  to  the  good  of  his 
country. — Lord  Bolingbroke. 

We  assemble  parliaments  and  councils  to  have  the  benefit  of  their 
collected  wisdom;  but  we  necessarily  have,  at  the  same  time,  the  in- 
conveniences of  their  collected  passions,  prejudices  and  private 
interests.  By  the  help  of  these,  artful  men  overpower  their  wisdom, 
and  dupe  its  possessors;  and  if  we  may  judge  by  the  acts,  arrets,  and 
edicts,  all  the  world  over,  for  regulating  commerce,  an  assembly  of 
great  men  is  an  assembly  of  the  greatest  fools  upon  earth. — Benjamin 
Franklin. 

If  you  should  ask  a  true-born  Englishman  where  you 
could  find  the  center  of  civilization — the  very  heart  of  the 
world — he  would  instantly  unroll  a  map  of  England,  and 
without  a  word  point  you  to  the  City  of  London.  If  fur- 
ther bent  on  the  acquisition  of  useful  knowledge  you  should 
ask  where  you  would  be  likely  to  find  the  greatest  delibera- 
tive assembly  in  the  world,  the  same  complacent  gentleman 
would  be  sure  to  answer  :  "Why  in  the  British  House  of 
Commons,  of  course  !  "  There  is  so  much  truth  in  both 
these  answers  that  they  may  be  accepted  without  discussion, 
and  if  there  be  any  doubters  they  will  not  be  found  among 
those  who  know  much  of  London,  or  who  have  been  fre- 
quent visitors  to  the  House  of  Commons. 

121 


122  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

From  the  far-away  days  of  the  old  Saxon  ' '  Wittenage- 
mote  "  down  to  these  later  days  in  which — 

Freedom  slowly  broadens  down 
From  precedent  to  precedent. 

the  history  of  the  British  Parliament,  or  company  of  ' '  par- 
lers "  or  "talkers,"  is  most  interesting  and  instructive. 
The  establishment  of  the  House  of  Commons  in  the  days  of 
the  royal  Edwards  was  practically  the  recognition  of  the 
just  right  of  the  people  to  have  a  share  in  their  own  gov- 
ernment. The  number  of  the  members  of  the  House 
of  Commons  varied  in  various  reigns.  In  the  days  of 
Edward  III.  they  numbered  250.  In  the  reign  of  Henry 
VIII.  they  reached  300.  At  the  dawn  of  this  century  the 
number  was  fixed  at  658,  where  it  now  stands. 

Some  of  the  most  brilliant  pages  in  the  history  of  the 
British  House  of  Commons  were  written  in  the  early  years 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  in  the  reigns  of  James  I.  and  of 
his  son,  the  hapless  Charles.  As  Carlyle  says,  the  "Iliad  " 
of  that  age  has  not  yet  been  written  or  sung.  The  conflict 
of  the  Commons  with  the  tyranny  of  the  Star  Chamber  and 
the  High  Commission  Court  is  a  study  for  all  lovers  of  free- 
dom for  all  coming  years.  It  was  not  so  much  in  the  tri- 
umphs of  Long  Marston  Moor,  of  Naseby,  of  Dunbar,  or 
Worcester,  that  freedom  had  occasion  to  rejoice  ;  as  in  the 
passage  of  the  memorable  "Bill  of  Rights"  by  the  per- 
sistence of  the  outraged  Commoners  in  the  third  Parliament. 
of  Charles  I.  That  bill  ranks  with  such  great  state  docu- 
ments as  Magna  Charta,  as  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
and  the  Proclamation  of  Emancipation.  And  even  we,  in 
this  great  free  land,  owe  more  than  we  can  ever  tell  to  that 
Bill  of  Rights,  which  won  liberty  for  the  world  when  the 
seventeenth  century  was  in  its  early  years.  That  bill  was  a 
dream  of  freedom,  which  America  has  interpreted  and 
translated  into  fact. 


I 


w 

G 
3    * 


PU 


THE  BRITISH  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS A  SKETCH.  123 

The  House  of  Commons  in  Westminster  is  one  of  the 
most  mixed  of  all  public  buildings.  It  seems  least  of  all 
fitted  for  the  purpose  to  which  it  is  devoted.  Of  course 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  beauty  about  the  House  of  Parlia- 
ment. The  Victoria  Tower,  overlooking  the  Thames,  a 
statelier  pile  than  Giotto's  Campanile  in  Florence,  has  been 
called  ' '  a  dream  of  architecture. "  This  may  all  be  true.  I 
have  no  doubt  architecture  has  its  dreams.  But  architect- 
ure can  have  nightmare  as  well  as  dreams,  or  the  Houses  of 
Parliament  would  not  be  what  they  are. 

The  House  of  Commons  is  a  large  building  in  the  form 
of  a  parallelogram,  with  graded  benches  on  either  side  run- 
ning the  whole  length  of  the  hall.  At  one  end  is  the 
Speaker's  chair,  a  dark,  heavy  sort  of  an  affair,  that  looks 
a  good  deal  like  a  bishop's  throne  that  has  stolen  out  of 
church  to  play  hide  and  seek  and  got  lost.  In  front  of  the 
chair  is  a  very  large  table  at  which  sit  "three  learned 
clerks,"  duly  wigged  and  gowned.  There  are  a  goodly 
number  of  books  of  reference  on  the  table  ;  also  two  large 
dispatch  boxes,  one  for  the  leader  of  the  government  and 
one  for  the  leader  of  the  opposition.  On  the  front  of  the 
table  lies  the  gorgeous  ' '  mace,  "or  "  fool's  bauble, "  as 
Cromwell  irreverently  called  it.  The  party  in  power  sits 
at  the  right  hand  of  the  Speaker,  the  party  in  opposition  on 
the  left.  Independent  members — "mugwumps,"  as  they 
may  be  justly  described — sit  lower  down  the  House,  or 
"  below  the  gangway."  The  galleries  on  the  right  and  left 
of  the  Speaker  are  reserved  for  noble  lords.  The  lower 
gallery  in  front  of  the  Speaker  is  known  as  the  Speaker's 
gallery,  above  which  is  the  smallest  gallery  of  all,  where 
the  people  of  England  gather,  at  least  a  few  of  them,  when- 
ever they  get  a  chance.  Behind  the  Speaker  is  another 
small  gallery  reserved  for  ladies.  It  is  screened  off  from 
public  gaze  by  a  very  beautiful  gilded  lattice  work,  and 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

has  generally  been  spoken  of  somewhat  rudely  as  "the 
ladies'  cage." 

What  a  battle  field  for  freedom,  for  civil  and  religious 
liberty  this  house  has  been  through  many  generations  !  And 
never  more  so  than  in  the  mid-years  of  this  century,  when 
Disraeli  and  Gladstone  and  Bright  were  in  all  their  glory. 
The  sagacious  Hebrew,  with  his  Asiatic  mysteries,  worthy 
of  the  devotees  of  modern  Theosophy,  has  passed  away. 
The  silver  trumpet  of  John  Bright,  the  great  tribune  of  the 
English  people,  is  forever  silent.  And  now  Gladstone's 
fiery  eloquence  is  hushed.  He,  too,  has  entered  the  ' '  silent 
land."  When  these  three  men  were  in  all  their  prime  there 
was  beautiful  fighting  all  along  the  line.  It  would  be 
exceedingly  difficult  to  find  three  more  dissimilar  men,  who 
yet  seemed  to  be  somehow  the  complement  of  each  other,  and 
so  formed  a  wonderful  combination.  The  spirits  of  Machi- 
avelli,  of  Milton,  and  Cromwell  dwelt  in  these  men,  and 
each  in  his  turn  did  masterly  work.  The  Sphinx  of  Eo-ypt 

*/  M.  «_?«/  J. 

was  not  more  silent  and  mystical  than  Disraeli,  when  he 
chose  the  silent  mood.  I  have  often  seen  him  sit  with 
folded  arms,  and  eye-glass  in  eye,  for  the  space  of  half  an 
hour,  as  immovable  as  though  he  was  stone  dead.  If  silence 
was  ever  golden,  Disraeli  knew  its  worth.  Some  said  the 
Prince  of  the  Powers  of  the  air  was  not  more  subtle,  and  in 
many  a  campaign  speech  was  applied  to  him  Tennyson's 
line — 

Only  the  devil  knows  what  he  means. 

And  yet  it  cannot  be  denied  that  Disraeli  did  his  country 
grand  service.  He  made  the  proud — and  some  thought 
impertinent — boast  that  he  had  "educated  his  party."  But 
there  was  truth  at  the  bottom  of  the  boast,  and  it  was  good 
for  the  party  and  for  the  country  that  this  education  had 
taken  place. 

William  Ewart  Gladstone  was  the  exact  opposite  of  his 
great  opponent.  Where  Disraeli  was  mystical  Gladstone 


THE  BRITISH  HOUSE    OF    COMMONS A  SKETCH.  125 

was  transparent.  There  was  ever  the  ring  of  the  profound- 
est  sincerity  in  all  he  said.  He  seemed  to  bring  into  the 
contentions  and  conflicts  of  political  life  the  mingled  atmos- 
phere of  the  college  and  the  cloister.  Life  was  sacred  and 
earnest,  marching  to  stately  music,  such  as  Milton  sung. 
There  was  no  affectation  of  goodness  in  Mr.  Gladstone.  It 
was  all  real.  Even  Disraeli  on  one  occasion  paid  him  the 
rare  compliment  of  saying:  "The  right  honorable  gentle- 
man at  the  head  of  Her  Majesty's  government  has  not 
one  redeeming  vice. " 

The  typical  Englishman,  John  Bright,  or,  as  he  was 
called,  "The  Noblest  Roman  of  Them  All,"  completed  a 
strange  trinity  of  great  men.  He  was  the  plain,  blunt  man 
who  talked  right  on,  in  simple  language,  now  beautiful, 
now  pathetic,  now  humorous,  and  now  impassioned.  John 
Bright's  organ  had  a  host  of  stops,  and  he  knew  exactly 
when  to  pull  them  out.  A  member  of  the  Society  of 
Friends,  Quaker  John,  like  George  Fox,  of  old,  he  loved  a 
fight,  and  his  good  sword  was  heard  in  clanging  blows  on 
the  shields  of  his  compeers  as  distinctly  as  on  those  of  his 
foes.  An  anticipated  speech  from  any  of  these  men  was 
enough  to  crowd  the  house,  and  every  conceivable  subterfuge 
in  any  way  consistent  with  truth  and  honor  was  resorted  to, 
to  beg,  buy,  borrow  or  steal  a  way  into  the  speaker's  or  the 
stranger's  gallery.  Such  occasions  are  burnt  in  upon  the 
memory.  On  one  occasion  when  Mr.  Gladstone  was  at  the 
helm  of  the  state,  it  was  deemed  necessary  to  suspend  the 
habeas  corpus  act  in  Ireland.  A  special  meeting  of  Parlia- 
ment was  called  for  Saturday — a  most  unusual  course. 

The  house  was  crowded.  Irish  members  being  there  in 
great  numbers.  Mr.  Gladstone  announced  the  purpose  of 
the  government,  and  went  into  a  narrative  of  sad  occur- 
rences just  communicated  by  the  Chief  Secretary  for  Ire- 
land, showing  the  need  of  immediate  action.  John  Bright 
was  in  his  seat  below  the  gangway,  manifesting  by  certain 


126  -       LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

signs  well  known  to  his  friends — such  as  twitchings  at  his 
neck-cloth  and  movings  about  on  the  bench — a  more  than 
common  interest  in  the  occasion.  The  Bill  was  about  to 
pass,  more  as  a  matter  of  form  than  anything  else,  giving 
the  executive  authority  to  repress  any  threatened  upris- 
ings— when  suddenly  cries  were  heard  all  over  the  house  : 

' '  Bright !     Bright !     Bright ! " 

A  moment  before  there  had  been  the  usual  indication, 
"Divide!  Divide!  Divide!"  signifying  readiness  to  vote. 
But  now  the  cry  was  for  Bright,  especially  from  the  Irish 
members,  most  of  whom  sat  below  the  gangway. 

Mr.  Bright  arose  and  apologizing  to  the  Irish  members, 
said  it  was  not  his  purpose  to  oppose  the  bill  before  the 
House,  indeed  he  intended  to  vote  for  .it,  but  he  had  risen  to 
ask  if  "  restraint  of  liberty  "  was  the  best  and  only  cure  the 
government  had  to  offer  for  Ireland's  wrongs.  He  wanted 
to  know  how  it  was  that  the  Irishman  got  on  well  enough 
and  was  made  much  of  and  found  to  be  useful  everywhere 
except  in  his  own  country.  Peal  after  peal  of  applause 
broke  forth  from  all  quarters  of  the  House,  and  from  Tory 
and  Liberal  and  Radical  came  ringing  cheers — not  all  in 
sympathy  with  his  sentiments,  but  all  in  bonds  to  spell  of 
his  masterly  oratory — as  the  grand  old  champion  of  right- 
eousness rang  out  his  plea  for  Ireland. 

"What  Ireland  needs  is  justice.  The  only  cure  for  her 
wounds  is  the  balm  of  righteousness.  If  I  had  my  way  I 
would  do  justice  to  Ireland,  and  then  I  would  open  the  prison 
doors  and  let  every  political  prisoner  go  free  and  trust  to 
righteousness  for  the  issues  !" 

Then  pointing  his  finger  to  Disraeli,  he  asked  if  he  was 
not  willing  to  forego  all  party  spirit  for  the  sake  of  doing 
a  great  and  lasting  good,  not  to  Ireland  only,  but  to  the 
whole  empire  and  the  world.  Cheer  followed  cheer,  and 
then  turning  squarely  around  to  the  Treasury  bench, 
he  asked  his  right  honorable  friends  if  they  had  no  better 


THE  BRITISH  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS A  SKETCH.  127 

things  to  offer  for  Ireland,  and  then,  tremulous  with  pas- 
sionate fervor,  added  :  "Is  this  task  beyond  your  power  ? 
If  so,  would  it  not  become  you  to  come  down  from  your 
high  places  and  learn  the  business  of  statesmanship  before 
you  assume  to  discharge  its  functions ,?"  John  Bright  sat 
down,  there  was  silence  for  a  moment,  and  Mr.  Gladstone 
rose  pale  and  agitated. 

He  declared  he  had  never  heard  Mr.  Bright  exercise  his 
great  powers  with  such  consummate  skill.  He  confessed 
that  England  had  blundered  over  Ireland  generation  after 
generation,  and  only  pleaded  that  he  was  as  sincere  as  the 
honorable  member  for  Birmingham  in  his  desire  to  heal 
the  sorrows  of  the  Emerald.  This  was  one  of  Mr.  Bright's 
impromptu  speeches.  It  was  a  crystal  stream  suddenly 
bursting  from  an  exhaustless  fountain.  Many  said  it  was 
one  of  the  greatest  speeches  of  his  life.  I  am  bold  enough 
to  express  the  opinion  that  that  night  was  an  epoch;  that 
that  speech  woke  up  Mr.  Gladstone  and  helped' the  cause  of 
Ireland  to  a  position  where  it  could  successfully  challenge 
the  attention  of  all  thoughtful  men. 

It  was  a  privilege  to  be  in  the  House  of  Commons  any 
time  during  the  debate  on  the  disestablishment  and  disen- 
dowment  of  the  Irish  church.  Disraeli  was,  as  he  said,  on 
the  side  of  the  angels,  and  stood  firmly  for  the  maintenance 
of  the  existing  state  of  things.  And  he  never  was  over 
burdened  with  scruples  as  to  the  methods.  About  this  time 
I  remember  an  amusing  scene.  Disraeli  had  been  speaking 
for  nearly  an  hour  ;  Gladstone  was  lying  with  his  head  well 
back  on  the  front  Treasury  bench,  one  would  think,  nearly 
asleep.  Disraeli  was  trying  to  make  the  worse  appear  the 
better  reason,  as  was  his  frequent  custom.  All  in  a  moment 
Mr.  Gladstone  sprang  to  his  feet  and  seized  his  hat,  com- 
pletely smashing  it  down  out  of  all  shape  on  the  dispatch 
box  in  his  excitement.  The  house  roared  with  amazement 
"  And  even  the  ranks  of  Tuscany, 
Could  scarce  forbear  to  cheer." 


128  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"I  rise  to  a  point  of  order,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "the 
right  honorable  gentleman  knows  perfectly  well  that  in  the 
statement  he  has  just  made  he  is  misleading  this  House  and 
the  country  at  large,  and  I  call  the  attention  of  the  House 
and  of  the  country  to  a  careful  consideration  of  the  state- 
ment." He  then  sat  down.  He  had  utterly  ruined  a  good 
silk  hat,  but  then  he  had  gained  his  point,  and  punctured 
William  Disraeli's  beautiful  bubble. 

After  the  tumult  had  subsided  Disraeli  readjusted  his 
eye-glasses,  and,  with  a  most  profound  bow,  said,  smil- 
ing sardonically  as  he  spoke  :  ' '  Mr.  Speaker,  I  congratu- 
late myself  that  there  is  a  substantial  piece  of  furniture 
between  my  right  honorable  friend  and  myself. " 

It  was  five  o'clock  on  a  beautiful  morning  when  the  great 
battle  concerning  the  Irish  Churcn  came  to  an  end.  Mr. 
Disreali  began  to  speak  about  1:30  o'clock.  And  his  speech, 
the  speech  of  a  forlorn  hope,  was  one  of  the  most  wonder- 
ful efforts  of  his  brilliant  career.  It  was  nearly  4  o'clock 
when  Gladstone  rose  to  close  the  debate.  He  was  worn, 
feeble,  but  he  rose  to  the  occasion,  and  as  the  growing  day 
broke  gently  through  the  stained  windows  he  seized  the 
beautiful  omen,  "Time  is  on  our  side!"  he  said,  "the 
night  has  passed,  the  day  is  breaking !  "  "  And  then,  with 
an  impassioned  peroration  he  closed  that  memorable  debate 
which  freed  Ireland  from  her  religious  inequalities. 

Disraeli  retired  to  the  House  of  Lords,  but  he  made  the 
name  of  Disraeli  so  great  that  the  title  "  Beaconsfield  "  will 
not  unlikely  fade  away.  Not  long  before  his  death  he  paid 
a  last  visit  to  the  House  of  Commons.  It  was  quite  pathetic 
to  mark  the  veteran  warrior  looking  down  from  the  peers' 
gallery  on  the  scene  of  his  former  conflicts. 

In  these  memories  of  the  House  of  Commons  it  would  be 
unpardonable  to  forget  the  bold  stand  John  Bright  took  as 
a  friend  of  America,  while  noble  lords  and  brainless  wits 
were  looking  on  ;  while  America  was  bleeding  at  every  pore, 


THE    BRITISH    HOUSE    OF    COMMONS A    SKETCH.          129 

in  their  simpering  idiocy  prophesying  that  "the  American 
bubble  was  going  to  burst,"  John  Bright  dared  to  stand 
almost  alone  to  plead  the  cause  of  the  Union.  He  spoke 
such  words  of  burning  enthusiasm  against  the  departure  of 
the  Alabama  from  Laird's  shipyard,  that  his  life  was 
threatened  by  many  who  had  only  threats  for  arguments. 
T\rhen  Roebuck  wanted  to  have  the  South  recognized,  John 
Bright  answered  him  in  such  words  that  Roebuck,  who  had 
won  the  unenviable  name  of  "Tearem,"  was  silenced,  and 
silenced  forever.  A  recent  visit  to  the  House  of  Commons 
revealed  the  awful  ravages  of  time.  What  with  the  changes 
of  time  and  caprices  of  constituencies  it  seemed  as  if,  with 
but  a  few  exceptions,  Cjiarles  Lamb's  sad  line  was  most 
appropriate — 

"  All  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces." 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD. 

Yet  I  doubt  not  through  the  ages, 

One  increasing  purpose  runs, 
And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened 

With  the  process  of  the  suns. 

— Lord  Tennyson. 

We  do  not  serve  the  dead — the  past  is  past, 
God  lives,  and  lifts  his  glorious  morning  up 
Before  the  eyes  of  men  awake. 

— Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning. 

The  less  government  we  have  the  better — the  fewer 
laws,  and  the  less  confided  power.  The  antidote  to  this 
abuse  of  formal  government  is,  the  influence  of  private 
character,  the  growth  of  the  individual. — R.  W.  Emerson. 

On  the  23d  of  July,  1847,  the  Queen  dissolved  Parlia- 
ment in  person.  The  elections  that  followed  were  very  con- 
siderably influenced  by  ecclesiastical  questions,  the  May- 
nooth  Grant  especially  being  a  considerable  factor  in  the 
agitation  of  the  time.  Many  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  friends 
urged  him  to  stand  for  the  honored  seat  of  the  University 
of  Oxford,  and  truth  to  tell,  he  was  not  without  some  am- 
bition to  represent  his  beloved  alma  mater  in  the  councils 
of  the  nation.  In  the  memorable  year  1847  he  appeared  as  a 
candidate  for  the  University  of  Oxford. 

The  seat  of  Sir  R.  H.  Inglis  was  regarded  as  perfectly  safe. 
The  real  fight  was  between  Mr.  Round  and  Mr.  Gladstone. 
Mr.  Round  was  a  member  of  the  ultra  Protestant  and  Tory 
school.  To  conserve  the  existing  condition  of  things,  and' 
to  stand  four-square  in  bold  defense  against  any  innova- 
tions, even  should  they  assume  the ,  vaunted  titles  of  neces- 
sary reforms,  was  Mr.  Round's  fixed  policy. 

130 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  131 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  too  magnanimous  to  sail  for  a  mo- 
ment under"  false  colors.  He  had  struggled  for  many  years 
for  the  exclusive  support  of  the  national  religion  by  the 
state,  but  he  had  struggled  in  vain.  Voluntaryism  was 
gaining  ground  on  every  hand.  The  champion  of  the  church 
finally  confessed  that  the  time  was  against  him. 

In  an  address  to  the  electors  of  Oxford,  referring  to  this 
matter,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  : 

* '  I  found  that  scarcely  a  year  passed  without  the  adop- 
tion of  some  fresh  measure  involving  the  national  recog' 
nition  and  the  national  support  of  various  forms  of  religion, 
and  in  particular  that  a  recent  and  fresh  provision  has  been 
made  for  the  propagation  from  a  public  chair  of  Arian  or 
Socinian  doctrines.  The  question  remaining  for  me  was, 
whether  aware  of  the  opposition  of  the  English  people,  I 
should  set  down  as  equal  to  nothing,  in  a  matter  primarily 
connected  not  with  our  own  but  with  their  priesthood,  the 
wishes  of  the  people  of  Ireland;  and  whether  I  should  avail 
myself  of  the  popular  feeling  in  regard  to  the  Roman  Cath- 
olics for  the  purpose  of  enforcing  against  them  a  system 
which  we  had  ceased  by  common  consent  to  enforce  against 
Arians — a  system  above  all,  of  which  I  must  say  that  it 
never  can  be  conformable  to  policy,  to  justice,  or  even  to 
decency,  when  it  has  become  avowedly  partial  and  one- 
sided in  its  application. " 

This  frank  statement  antagonized  many  of  the  Oxford 
voters  who  were  somewhat  inclined  to  vote  for  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, and  it  certainly  strengthened  the  hands  of  those  who 
were  bent  on  his  defeat.  The  press  generally  approved  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  position  and  spoke  warmly  of  his  talents 
and  industry.  They  regarded  him  still  as  a  true  and  valiant 
friend  of  the  church,  but  hailed  the  advance  he  had  made 
in  ceasing  to  call  upon  the  Legislature  to  ignore  all  forms 
of  religion  but  those  by  law  established,  or  which  were  ex- 
actly coincident  with  his  own  form  of  faith.  The  Times- 


132  LIFK    OF    GLADSTONE. 

said:  "  His  election,  unlike  that  of  Mr.  Round,  while  it 
sends  an  important  member  to  the  House  of  Commons,  will 
certainly  be  creditable,  and  may  be  valuable  to  the  uni- 
versity; and  we  heartily  hope  that  no  negligence  or  hesita- 
tion among  his  supporters  may  impede 'his  success.  The 
candidate  for  Oxford  had  been  marching  along  a  path  of 
liberal  views  and  broadening  sentiments  since  fifteen  years 
ago  he  entered  the  House  of  Commons,  member  for  New- 
ark, and  the  rising  hope  of  the  Tory  party. " 

The  election  was  watched  with  great  interest  not  only  by 
those  deeply  concerned  about  church  matters,  but  far  and 
near  it  was  felt,  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  worthy  of  the  honor 
he  asked,  and  that  it  would  be  a  very  good  thing  for  Oxford 
that  she  should  have  Mr.  Gladstone  for  her  representative. 
The  nomination  took  place  on  the  29th  of  July,  1847.  The 
ceremony  of  nomination  having  been  completed,  the  voting 
commenced  in  the  Convocation-house  of  the  University. 
The  place  was  densely  crowded.  Mr.  Gladstone's  friends 
rallied  from  far  and  near.  At  the  close  of  the  poll  the 
members  stood : 

.  Inglis, 
Gladstone, 
Rounds, 

It  was  the  most  enthusiastic  election  Oxford  had  ever 
known,  and  there  were  a  larger  number  of  votes  cast  than 
had  ever  been  cast  before. 

At  this  election,  to  the  amazement  of  many  thoughtful 
people,  Baron  Rothschild  was  elected  for  the  City  of  London. 
That  he  should  have  been  elected  at  all  was  a  surprise,  but 
much  more,  that  he  should  be  elected  for  so  important  a  seat 
as  the  City  of  London.  There  was  nothing  illegal  in  the 
election  of  a  Jew,  but  the  'difficulty  was,  that  when  elected, 
the  statutory  declarations  required  of  him  virtually  pre- 
cluded him  from  taking  his  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons. 


JUSTIN  MCCARTHY,  M   P. 


RIGHT  HON.  A.  J.   BALFOUR:    MOVING  THE  HOUSE  FOK  A  PUBLIC 
FUNERAL  FOR  MR.  GLADSTONE. 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  133 

Soon  after  the  meeting  of  Parliament  with  a  view  to  over- 
coming this  difficulty,  Lord  John  Russell  proposed  a  resolu- 
tion, which  affirmed  the  eligibility  of  Jews  to  all  functions 
and  offices  to  which  Roman  Catholics  were  admissible  by 
law.  Sir  R.  H.  Inglis,  the  senior  member  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  Oxford,  bitterly  opposed  the  motion,  but  it  was 
supported  with  equal  ardor  by  Mr.  Gladstone  who  asked 
whether  there  were  any  grounds  for  the  disqualification  of 
the  Jews  which  distinguished  them  from  any  other  class  in 
the  community. 

."With  regard  to  the  stand  now  made  for  a  Christian 
Parliament, " said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "the  present  measure  did 
not  make  a  severance  between  politics  and  religion;  it  only 
amounted  to  a  declaration  that  there  was  no  necessity  for 
excluding  a  Jew,  as  such,  from  an  assembly  in  which  every 
man  felt  sure  that  a  vast  and  overwhelming  majority  of  its 
members  would  always  be  Christian.  It  is  said  that  by 
admitting  a  few  Jews  they  would  un-Christianize  Parliament; 
that  was  true  in  word,  but  not  in  substance.  He  had  no 
doubt  that  the  majority  of  the  members  who  composed  it 
would  always  perform  their  obligations  on  the  true  faith  of 
a  Christian.  It  was  too  late  to  say  that  the  measure  was  un- 
Christian,  and  that  it  would  call  down  the  vengeance  of 
heaven.  When  he  opposed  the  last  law  for  the  removal  of 
Jewish  disabilities,  he  f orsaw  that  if  we  gave  the  Jew  muni- 
cipal, magisterial,  and  executive  functions,  we  could  not 
refuse  him  legislative  functions  any  longer.  The  Jew  was 
refused  entrance  into  that  House  because  he  would  then  be 
a  maker  of  the  laws;  but  who  made  the  maker  of  the  law? 
The  constituencies;  and  into  these  constituencies  we  had 
admitted  the  Jews.  Now,  were  the  constituencies  Christian 
constituencies  ?  If  they  were,  was  it  probable  that  the 
Parliament  would  cease  to  be  a  Christian  Parliament  ?  " 

The  year  1848  was  memorable  as  a  year  of  unrest  and 
agitation,  all  Europe  was  perturbed,  the  French  had  arevo- 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

lution  in  hand,  and  especially  in  England  the  Chartist  move- 
ment met  its  Waterloo.  This  subject  cannot  be  dismissed 
in  a  paragraph.  Chartism  had  a  much  firmer  hold  on  the 
hearts  of  the  people  than  was  generally  understood. 
Unwise  headstrong  leaders  postponed  a  great  cause  as  they 
had  done  again  and  again.  When  they  clamored  that 
there  should  be  an  entire  cessation  of  work  till  the  Charter 
was  law,  they  only  succeeded  in  setting  back  the  sunbeams 
on  the  dial  of  time.  The  late  M.  M.  Trumball  gave  a  most 
exhaustive  essay  on  the  whole  question  of  English  Chartism 
as  viewed  from  an  American  stand  point  from  which  we 
quote  freely.  He  says: 

The  People's  Charter  was  a  code  of  principles  drawn  up 
in  the  form  of  an  Act  of  Parliament,  with  a  long  preamble. 
It  is  tedious  reading,  but  it  may  be  easily  condensed  into  a 
demand  for  the  American  representative  system,  although 
the  abolition  of  monarchy  and  aristocracy  was  postponed  to 
a  more  convenient  season.  Then  the  Kings  and  the  Lords 
were  to  be  quietly  supplanted  by  a  President  and  a  Senate. 
The  original  draft  of  the  Charter  contained  a  demand  for 
woman  suffrage;  but  as  radical  sentiment  in  England  was 
not  then  quite  radical  enough  for  that,  it  was  thought 
expedient  to  throw  the  women  overboard,  because  '  'they 
loaded  the  Charter  down. "  The  six  points  of  the  Charter 
were — 1.  Universal  Suffrage.  2.  Vote  by  Ballot.  3.  An- 
nual Parliaments.  4.  Equal  Electoral  Districts.  5.  No 
Property  Qualification  for  Members  of  Parliament.  6.  Pay- 
ment of  Members.  The  name,  "The  People's  Charter," 
was  given  to  it  by  O'Connell,  who  said  that  the  man  who 
was  not  a  Chartist  *  'was  either  a  knave  profiting  by  misrule, 
or  a  fool  upon  whom  reason  and  argument  could  make  no 
impression. "  This  title  also  distinguished  it  from  Magna 
Charta,  the  charter  of  the  barons  and  middle  classes.  In 
Magna  Charta  the  serfs,  the  bulk  of  the  English  laborers, 
were  not  considered  as  having  any  rights  which  other  peo- 


MEMBER   FOR   OXFORD.  135 

pie  were  bound  to  respect.     The  phrase  Nullus  liber  homo 
excluded  them  from  the  benefits  of  the  Great  Charter. 

The  People's  Charter  was  a  political  remedy  for  social 
evils,  therefore  barren.  It  could  not  cure  hunger,  although 
the  Chartists  thought  it  could.  The  impulse  and  energy  of 
Chartism  came  from  social  injustice,  and  this  could  only  be 
removed  by  social  reformation  and  improvement.  The 
Chartists  thought  that  American  abundance  came  from  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  not  from  the  opulent 
material  resources  of  this  imperial  domain. 

Chartism  as  an  organized  menace  to  the  government,  was 
decisively  overthrown  on  April  10,  1848,  in  a  downpour  of 
rain,  in  a  battle  of  its  own  seeking,  and  on  a  field  of  its 
own  choice.  In  February  the  French  revolution  was  ac- 
complished. This  inflamed  the  imagination  of  the  Chartists 
and  stimulated  them  to  attempt  a  similar  achievement.  The 
French  revolution  literally  forced  the  hand  of  the  Chartist 
leaders.  They  must  now  crystallize  their  talk  into  action 
or  abdicate.  Accordingly  they  appointed  the  revolution 
for  the  10th  of  April.  To  that  end  a  "National  Conven- 
tion," composed  of  delegates  chosen  by  the  various  Chartist 
organizations  of  Great  Britain,  was  to  meet  in  London  as  a 
revolutionary  parliament,  and  direct  the  campaign.  At  the 
meetings  where  those  delegates  were  elected,  the  most  vio- 
lent and  Jacobinical  speeches  were  made.  At  Nottingham, 
where  George  Julian  Harney  was  chosen  delegate,  it  was 
resolved  that  the  Chartists  "would  no  longer  speak  to 
Parliament  in  black  and  white.  They  would  now  speak  by 
bayonets."  This  was  the  tone  and  character  of  all  the 
speeches,  and  many  martial  songs  were  sung  to  the  tune  of 
the  Marseillaise. 

The  "National  Convention"  met  in  London  and  their 
plan  of  revolution  had  as  much  resemblance  to  the  French 
method  as  a  Sunday-school  picnic  has  to  the  battle  of  Get 
tysburg.  The  strategy  and  tactics  were  ineffective  and 


136  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

weak.  A  petition  containing  five  million  signatures  was  to 
be  carried  to  the  House  of  Commons  on  a  wagon  drawn  by 
eight  stout  horses  and  escorted  by  half  a  million  men.  An- 
other half  a  million,  not  in  the  ranks,  were  to  render  out- 
side assistance.  The  ostensible  reason  for  this  vast  numer- 
ical display  was  merely  an  imposing  procession  of  citizens 
to  present  a  petition  to  Parliament,  but  the  genuine  pur- 
pose was  to  overawe  the  legislature  and  the  government. 
The  various  divisions  were  to  meet  in  their  respective  local- 
ities and  march  to  Kennington  Common.  There  they  were 
to  be  formed  into  one  vast  army  and  march  to  the  House  of 
Commons.  By  this  brilliant  manoeuvre  the  Chartists  put 
the  river  Thames  between  themselves  and  their  objective 
point,  leaving  the  bridges  in  possession  of  the  enemy.  Had 
all  the  rest  of  the  strategy  been  skilfully  carried  out,  this 
blunder  would  have  been  fatal  to  the  enterprise. 

The  challenge  of  the  Chartists  was  at  once  accepted  by 
the  government.  The  cabinet  met  and  sent  for  the  Duke  of 
Wellington.  He  was  then  seventy-nine  years  old,  deaf, 
rickety  and  shrunken  to  about  one  hundred  and  ten  pounds; 
but  the  iron  will  had  not  grown  rusty,  nor  was  his  martial 
nerve  impaired.  He  was  eager  to  command,  and  his  vanity 
rejoiced  that  he  had  not  been  passed  over  for  some  younger 
man.  He  promised  to  protect  the  government  and  defend 
London  against  the  Chartists.  His  tactics  and  strategy 
were  as  strong  as  those  of  the  Chartists  were  weak.  He 
ordered  all  the  troops  to  London  that  could  possibly  be 
spared;  he  fortified  the  Tower,  the  Bank  of  England  and 
all  the  public  buildings;  he  directed  that  all  shops  and  places 
of  business  be  closed  on  the  10th  of  April.  Three  hundred 
thousand  special  constables  were  sworn  in,  of  whom  Napo- 
leon III  was  one.  The  government,  feeling  perfectly  se- 
cure, now  assumed  the  offensive,  and  on  the  9th  of  April  a 
proclamation  was  issued  prohibiting  the  procession  ap- 
pointed for  the  following  day. 


THE  SHELDONTAX  THEATBK,  OXFORD. 


MEMBER   FOR   OXFORD.  137 

As  soon  as  the  government  proclamation  appeared.  Fer- 
gus O'Connor,  Member  of  Parliament  for  Nottingham, 
Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Chartists,  hoisted  the  white  flag 
and  surrendered.  He  appeared  next  morning  in  the  * '  Na- 
tional Convention  "  and  implored  that  the  whole  programme 
be  abandoned.  He  was  overruled  by  the  Convention  and 
compelled  to  take  his  seat  in  the  "Triumphal"  car.  As 
for  the  rank  and  file,  most  of  them  weakened  when  they 
read  the  proclamation  and  saw  the  preparations  made  by 
the  government.  Some  of  the  divisions,  however,  as- 
sembled at  the  rendezvous  appointed  for  them,  and  marched 
through  the  city  to  Kennington.  They  were  not  molested 
by  the  soldiers  or  police,  but  as  soon  as  they  had  crossed 
the  river,  the  Duke  of  Wellington  took  possession  of  the 
bridges  and  commanded  all  the  approaches  to  the  city  with 
his  cannon.  An  officer  was  then  sent  to  Kennington  to  in- 
form the  commander  of  the  Chartist  army  that  the  proces- 
sion would  not  be  allowed  to  cross  the  bridges,  and  the 
information  was  accompanied  by  an  order  for  the  meeting 
to  disperse.  Mr.  O'Connor  promptly  assured  the  officer 
that  the  order  would  be  obeyed.  There  was  a  good  deal  of 
passionate  oratory  indulged  in  by  some  of  the  others  in  the 
shape  of  protest  against  the  "arbitrary"  order  of  the  gov- 
ernment, and  Ernest  Jones,  the  most  chivalrous  of  the 
Chartist  leaders,  seeing  the  strategical  blunder,  exclaimed 
with  bitterness  and  vexation  :  "  We  are  on  the  wrong  side 
of  the  river;  we  can  do  nothing."  There  were  not  more 
than  twenty-five  thousand  men  there  altogether,  and  they 
sullenly  melted  away.  Chartism  as  a  physical  force  was  at 
an  end  in  England.  That  evening  the  monster  petition  was 
carted  over  to  the  House  of  Commons  like  ignominious 
freight,  and  Mr.  O'Connor  presented  it  amid  a  tumult  of 
laughter  and  jeers  from  every  part  of  the  House.  It  is  in- 
teresting to  note  in  this  connection  that  many  remarkable 
men  were  sworn  in  as  special  constables,  to  keep  the  peace 


138  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

on  this  memorable  occasion,  among  whom  were  Prince  Louis 
Napoleon,  who  was  then  residing  in  London,  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk,  Edward  Stanley,  Earl  of  Derby,  and  William 
Ewart  Gladstone. 

Although  nobody  was  killed  or  wounded  at  the  battle  of 
Kennington,  the  victory  obtained  by  the  Duke  of  Welling- 
ton, on  the  10th  of  April,  was  as  decisive  in  its  way  as  the 
victory  at  Waterloo.  It  put  an  end  to  that  peculiar  social 
war  which  for  ten  years  the  Chartists  had  waged  in  En- 
gland. As  the  victory  at  Waterloo  had  eliminated  Bona- 
partism  as  a  physical  power  from  the  politics  of  Europe,  so 
the  battle  of  Kennington  eliminated  Chartism  as  a  physical 
force  from  the  politics  of  England.  There  was  plenty  of 
sarcasm  thrown  at  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  for  the  tre- 
mendous preparations  he  had  made  against  twenty-five 
thousand  unarmed  working  men  holding  an  amiable  pic-nic 
at  Kennington  Common;  but  he  answered  that  he  had  made 
his  dispositions  to  meet  what  the  Chartists  intended  to  do, 
not  what  they  actually  did.  They  had  proclaimed  a  evo- 
lutionary purpose  and  he  had  complimented  them  by  be- 
lieving what  they  said. 

Many  of  the  social  problems  now  exciting  the  American 
people  were  first  propounded  by  the  Chartists.  Even  the 
"single-tax"  and  land-confiscation  theory,  revived  by 
Mr.  Henry  George,  is  of  Chartist  origin.  Indeed,  the 
ideas,  arguments,  and  some  of  the  phraseology  of  "Progress 
and  Poverty"  bewilder  us  in  the  state  papers  of  the  Chart- 
ists. A  Chartist  petition  drawn  up  by  Lovett,  and  pre- 
sented to  Parliament  in  1838,  calls  for  such  legislation  as  will 
compel  the  owners  of  land  '  'to  defray  all  tlie  expenses  of  tJie 
state,  and  Parliament  is  informed  that  ' '  land  was  bestowed  by 
the  bountiful  Creator  upon  all  his  children."  The  petition 
denied  the  right  of  private  ownership  of  land,  and  repu- 
diated the  title  of  landowners  to  "what  they  call  their 
property. ' '  Forty  years  later,  Mr.  George  reproduces  the 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  139 

argument  and  doctrine  of  that  petition,  and  speaks  con- 
temptuously of  the  title  of  landowners  in  America  to 
''what  they  are  pleased  to  call  their  land."  William  Lovett 
appears  to  have  had  a  patent  on  the  "single-tax"  contriv- 
ance nearly  fifty  years  ahead  of  Mr.  Henry  George. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  best  features  of  the  Charter  have 
become  part  of  the  law  of  England,  brought  about, 
albeit,  by  men  and  methods  little  dreamed  of  by  the  early 
Chartists. 

The  condition  of  affairs  excited  the  sarcasm  of  Mr. 
Disraeli,  who  jeered  at  the  government,  which  he  described 
as  "a  man  smoking  a  cigar  on  a  barrel  of  gunpowder." 
Ever  loyal  to  his  chief,  Mr.  Gladstone,  by  a  series  of  incon- 
trovertible statistics,  demonstrated  the  complete  success  of 
Sir  Robert  Peel's  policy,  and  pleaded  for  the  confidence  of 
the  country. 

"I  am  sure,"  said  Mr.  Gladstone,  "that  this  House  of 
Commons  will  prove  itself  to  be  worthy  of  the  Parliaments 
which  preceded  it,  worthy  of  the  Sovereign  which  it  has 
been  called  to  advise,  and  worthy  of  the  people  which  it 
has  been  chosen  to  represent,  by  sustaining  this  nation,  and 
enabling  it  to  stand  firm  in  the  midst  of  the  convulsions 
that  shake  European  society,  by  doing  all  that  pertains  to 
us  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  social  order,  the  stability 
of  trade,  and  the  means  of  public  employment;  and  by  dis- 
charging our  consciences,  on  our  own  part,  under  the 
difficult  circumstances  of  the  crisis,  in  the  perfect  trust  that 
if  we  set  a  good  example  to  the  nation,  for  whose  interests 
we  are  _appointed  to  consult,  they  too,  will  stand  firm  as 
they  have  done  in  other  times  of  almost  desperate  emer- 
gency ;  and  that  through  their  good  sense,  their  moderation, 
and  their  attachment  to  the  institutions  of  the  country,  we^ 
shall  see  these  institutions  still  exist,  a  blessing  and  a  benefit 
to  posterity,  whatever  alarms  and  whatever  misfortunes 
may  unfortunately  befall  other  portions  of  civilized  Europe. " 


140  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Later  on  in  this  session  Lord  John  Russell  having 
moved  that  the  House  of  Commons  resolve  itself  into  a  com- 
mittee on  the  oaths  to  be  taken  by  members  of  the  two 
Houses  of  Parliament,  with  a  view  to  further  relief  upon  this 
subject,  Mr.  Gladstone  rose  and  said  that  he  should  not 
shrink  from  stating  his  opinion  thereon.  He  was  deliber- 
ately convinced  that  the  civil  and  political  claims  of  the  Jew 
to  the  discharge  of  civil  and  political  duties,  ought  not,  in 
justice,  to  be  barred,  and  could  not  beneficially  be  barred 
because  of  a  difference  in  religion.  But  there  were  sufficient 
grounds  for  going  into  committee  independent  of  this  main 
purpose.  Oaths,  when  taken  by  large  masses  of  men,  and 
under  associations  not  very  favorable  to  solemn  religious 
feelings,  had  a  tendency  to  degenerate  into  formalism.  Nor 
could  he  say  that  the  present  oaths  had  no  words  in  them 
which  could  not  with  advantage  be  omitted.  At  the  same 
time  he  was  glad  that  the  noble  lord  had  retained  the  words 
"on  the  true  faith  of  a  Christian"  in  respect  to  all  Christian 
members  of  that  House.  The  measure  now  brought  forward 
should  have  his  support  at  every  stage. 

Later  on  in  this  session  he  made  important  speeches  on 
the  navigation  laws,  and  subsequently  on  a  motion  for  going 
into  committee  of  supply,  introduced  the  Canadian  diffi- 
culties by  calling  attention  to  certain  points  of  the  In- 
demnity Bill.  This  address  created  very  considerable  in- 
fluence on  the  minds  of  Canadians. 

The  sky  of  1850  was  darkened 'with  sorrow  that  entered 
into  Mr  Gladstone's  very  soul.  Early  in  the  year  he  lost  a 
little  daughter.  She  had  lived  long  enough  to  become  ex- 
ceedingly precious,  and  when  her  young  spirit  passed  away 
it  left  a  void  that  was  very  hard  to  fill.  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
a  man  of  ardent  affections  and  impassioned  friendships. 
Those  who  were  bound  to  him  by  ties  of  earthly  kindredship 
were  very  dear,  and  hardly  less  dear  were  those  he  called 
l3y  the  endearing  name  of  friend. 


MEMBER    FOR   OXFORD. 

In  this  same  year,  he  lost  in  another,  and  to  him  more 
poignant  sense,  two  of  the  most  valued  friends  of  his  early 
life.  Mr.  J.  R.  Hope-Scott  and  Archdeacon  Henry  Man- 
ning, afterwards  Cardinal,  who  joined  the  Church  of  Rome. 
They  were  the  godfathers  of  his  eldest  son,  and  in  those 
days  a  man  was  in  the  habit  of  selecting  his  dearest  and 
most  cherished  friends  to  discharge  the  functions  of  this 
sacred  office.  The  secession  of  these  honored  friends  from 
the  church  of  England  to  the  church  of  Rome  left  their 
mutual  esteem  unimpaired,  still  it  opened  an  awful  gulf  be 
tween  them.  They  could  never  be  the  same  to  each  other 
again.  Mr.  Gladstone  wrote  a  letter  to  Mr.  Hope-Scott,  a 
perusal  of  which  will  serve  to  show  the  intensely  sensitive 
spiritual  character  of  the  writer,  and  the  depth  and  sincerity 
of  his  regrets.  The  realm  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  esteem  was 
very  near  to  the  kingdom  of  love.  He  writes  thus: 

'  'Separated  we  are,  but  I  hope  and  think  not  yet  estranged;. 
Were  I  more  estranged  I  should  bear  the  separation  better. 
If  estrangement  is  to  come  I  know  not,  but  it  will  only  be 
I  think,  from  causes  the  operation  of  which  is  still  in  its 
infancy — causes  not  affecting  me.  Why  should  I  be^ 
estranged  from  you?  I  honor  you  even  in  what  I  think 
you  err;  why,  then,  should  my  feelings  to  you  alter  in  any- 
thing else  ?  It  seems  to  me  as  though  in  these  fearful  times, 
events  were  more  and  more  growing  too  large  for  our  puny 
grasp,  and  that  we  should  the  more  look  for  and  trust  the 
divine  purpose  in  them,  when  we  find  they  have  wholly  passed 
beyond  the  reach  and  measure  of  our  own.  'The  Lord  is  in 
His  holy  temple;  let  all  the  earth  keep  silence  before  Him.' 
The  very  afflictions  of  the  present  are  a  sign  of  joy  to  fol- 
low. Thy  kingdom  come,  Thy  will  be  done,  is  still  our 
prayer  in  common — the  same  prayer  in  the  same  sense,  and 
a  prayer  which  absorbs  every  other.  That  is  for  the  future. 
For  the  present  we  have  to  endure,  trust,  and  to  pray  that 


142  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

each  day  may  bring  its  strength  with  its  burden,  and  its 
lamp  for  its  gloom." 

How  matured  that  affection  was  as  the  swift-rolling  years 
went  on  we  may  judge  from  a  single  paragraph  written 
long  years  afterward.  In  the  year  1873,  Mrs.  Maxwell 
Scott  of  Abbotsford  asked  Mr.  Gladstone  if  he  would  send 
her  some  recollections  of  her  father.  He  responded  in  the 
most  generous  manner,  and  closed  his  account  of  his  friend 
in  these  beautiful  and  impressive  words : 

"  If  I  have  traversed  some  of  the  ground  in  sadness,  1 
now  turn  to  the  present  thought  of  his  light  and  peace  and 
progress,  and  may  they  be  his  more  and  more  abundantly, 
in  that  world  where  the  shadows  that  our  sins  and  follies 
cast,  no  longer  darken  the  aspect  and  glory  of  the  truth;  and 
may  God  ever  bless  you,  the  daughter  of  my  friend." 

On  the  19th  of  February,  1850,  Mr.  Disraeli  moved  for 
a  committee  of  the  whole  House  to  consider  such  a  revision 
of  the  Poor  Laws  of  the  United  Kingdom,  as  might  mitigate 
the  distress  of  the  agricultural  classes.  Sir  James  Graham 
strongly  opposed  the  motion,  but  Mr.  Gladstone  heartily 
supported  it.  He  said  that  the  condition  of  the  farming 
class  and  Of  the  agriculturial  laborers  in  a  large  portion  of 
England,  to  say  nothing  of  Ireland,  was  such  as  to  demand 
the  careful  attention  and  consideration  of  the  House. 

Twice  during  this  session  Mr.  Gladstone  addressed  the 
House  on  questions  connected  with  slavery.  But  the  most 
important  debate  of  the  session  arose  out  of  the  affairs  of 
Greece.  Mr.  G.  Barnett  Smith  says: 

"The  Greek  government  having  refused  to  afford  compen- 
sation in  response  to  Certain  demands  which  the  English 
government  had  made  on  account  of  the  claims  of  specified 
British  subjects,  Admiral  Sir  William  Parker  was  directed 
to  proceed  to  Athens  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  satisfac- 
tion. Failing  in  this  the  Admiral  blockaded  the  Piraeus. 
The  news  of  this  somewhat  high-handed  proceeding  produced 


MR.  GLADSTONE  LECTURING  IN  THE   SHELDONIAN  THEATRE,  OXFORD. 


MEMBER    FOR   OXFOKD.  143 

dissatisfaction  in  certain  quarters  in  England,  the  policy 
being  condemned  as  unworthy  of  the  dignity  and  discredit- 
able to  the  reputation  of  a  power  like  Great  Britain.  The 
debates  in  both  Houses  initiated  upon  this  Greek  question 
took  a  wider  scope  than  the  facts  just  enumerated,  and 
eventually  included  our  relations  with  France.  The  sta- 
bility of  the  Whig  administration  depended  upon  the  result 
of  the  discussions.  Lord  Palmerston,  whose  policy  as  For- 
eign Minister  was  thus  assailed,  before  the  great  debate  in 
the  House  of  Commons  came  on,  tendered  an  explanation  of 
the  circumstances  attending  the  withdrawal  of  the  French 
minister  from  London,  and  related  the  proceedings  which 
had  taken  place  on  the  part  of  the  representatives  of  both 
governments,  alleging  also  his  strong  desire  to  conciliate  the 
French  government  and  to  restore  an  amicable  understand- 
ing between  the  two  countries.  In  the  House  of  Lords, 
upon  a  resolution  moved  by  Lord  Stanley,  the  government 
found  themselves  in  a  minority  of  thirty-seven.  This  gave 
the  impending  debate  in  the  Commons  additional  importance, 
the  fall  of  the  ministry  following  as  a  natural  consequence, 
unless  the  lower  house  should  reverse  the  condemnation  pro- 
nounced by  the  upper.  Mr.  Roebuck — much  to  the  sur- 
prise of  many — came  to  the  defense  of  the  government,  by 
proposing  the  following  motion  :  '  That  the  principles 
which  have  hitherto  regulated  the  foreign  policy  of  Her 
Majesty's  government  are  such  as  are  required  to  preserve 
untarnished  the  honor  and  dignity  of  this  country,  and  in 
times  of  unexampled  difficulty,  the  best  calculated  to 
maintain  peace  between  England  and  the  various  nations  of 
the  world.'  The  debate  commenced  on  the  24th  of  June 
and  extended  over  four  nights.  It  was  marked  on  both 
sides  of  the  House  by  speeches  of  unusual  oratorical  excel- 
lence and  brilliancy.  Sir  Robert  Peel  delivered  a  powerful 
speech  against  the  ministers,  and  one  memorable  not 
only  for  its  eloquence  but  also  from  the  melancholy  fact 


144  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

that  it  was  the  last  speech  he  was  fated  to  deliver  before 
that  assembly,  in  whose  midst  he  had  so  long  been  a  con- 
spicuous figure.  Lord  Palmerston  energetically  defended 
his  policy  in  a  speech  of  nearly  five  hours'  duration.  At  its 
close  he  challenged  the  verdict  of  the  House  whether  the 
foreign  policy  of  her  Majesty's  ministers  had  been  proper 
and  fitting,  and  whether,  as  a  subject  of  ancient  Rome  could 
hold  himself  free  from  indignity  by  saying  Civis  Rcnnanus 
sum,  a  British  subject  in  a  foreign  country  should  not  be 
protected  by  the  vigilant  eye  and  strong  arm  of  the  govern- 
ment against  injustice  and  wrong. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  speech  on  the  occasion  was  one  of  those 
fine  efforts  that  will  never  be  forgotten  by  those  who  heard 
it.  We  quote  that  memorable  passage  in  which  the  rising 
statesman  entranced  his  hearers  by  his  reply  to  Lord 
Palmerston's  allusion  to  the  Roman  citizen  : 

'Sir,  great  as  is  the  influence  and  power  of  Britain,  she  cannot 
afford  to  follow,  for  any  length  of  time,  a  self-isolating  policy.  It 
would  be  a  contravention  of  the  law  of  nature  and  of  God,  if  it  were 
possible  for  any  t  ingle  nation  of  Christendom  to  emancipate  itself 
from  the  obligations  which  bind  all  other  nations,  and  to  arrogate,  in 
the  face  of  mankind,  a  position  of  peculiar  privilege.  And  now  I  will 
grapple  with  the  noble  lord  on  the  ground  which  he  selected  for  him- 
self, in  the  most  triumphant  portion  of  his  speech,  by  his  reference  to 
those  emphatic  words,  Civis  Romanus  sum.  He  vaunted,  amidst  the 
cheers  of  his  supporters,  that  under  his  administration  an  English- 
man should  be,  throughout  the  world,  what  the  citizen  of  Rome  had 
been.  What  then,  sir,  was  a  Roman  citizen  ?  He  was  the  member  of 
a  privileged  caste  ;  he  belonged  to  a  conquering  race,  to  a  nation  that 
held  all  others  bound  down  by  a  strong  arm  of  power.  For  him  there 
was  to  be  an  exceptional  system  of  law ;  for  him  principles  were  to 
be  asserted,  and  by  him  rights  were  to  be  enjoyed,  that  were  denied 
to  the  rest  of  the  world.  Is  such,  then  the  view  of  the  noble  lord  as 
to  the  relation  which  is  to  subsist  between  England  and  other  coun- 
tries ?  Does  he  make  the  claim  for  us  that  we  are  to  be  uplifted  upon 
a  platform  high  above  the  standing-ground  of  all  other  nations  ?  It 
is,  indeed,  too  clear,  not  only  from  the  expressions  but  from  the  whole 
tone  of  the  speech  of  the  noble  viscount,  that  too  much  of  this  notion 
is  lurking  in  his  mind  ;  that  he  adopts,  in  part,  that  vain  conception 
that  we,  forsooth,  have  a  mission  to  be  the  censors  of  vice  and  folly, 
of  abuse  and  imperfection,  among  the  other  countries  of  the  world  ; 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  145 

that  we  are  to  be  the  universal  schoolmasters  ,  and  that  al)  those  who 
hesitate  to  recognize  our  office,  can  be  governed  only  by  prejudice  or 
personal  animosity,  and  should  have  the  blind  war  of  diplomacy 
forthwith  declared  against  them.  And  certainly,  if  the  business  of  a 
Foreign  Secretary  were  to  carry  on  diplomatic  wars,  all  must  admit 
that  the  noble  lord  is  a  master  in  the  discharge  of  his  functions. 
What,  sir,  ought  a  Foreign  Secretary  to  be  ?  Is  he  to  be  like  some 
gallant  knight  at  a  tournament  of  old,  pricking  forth  into  the  lists, 
armed  at  all  points,  confiding  in  his  sinews  and  his  skill,  challenging 
all  comers  for  the  sake  of  honor,  and  having  no  other  duty  than  to 
lay  as  many  as  possible  of  his  adversaries  sprawling  in  the  dust  ?  If 
such  is  the  idea  of  a  good  Foreign  Secretary,  I,  for  one,  would  vote  to 
the  noble  lord  his  present  appointment  for  his  life.  But,  sir,  I  do  not 
understand  the  duty  of  a  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs  to  be  of  such 
a  character.  I  understand  it  to  be  his  duty  to  conciliate  peace  with 
dignity.  I  think  it  to  be  the  very  first  of  all  his  duties  studiously  to 
observe,  and  to  exalt  in  honor  among  mankind,  that  great  code  of 
principles  which  is  termed  the  law  of  nations,  which  the  honorable 
and  learned  member  for  Sheffield  has  found,  indeed,  to  be  very  vague 
in  its  nature,  and  greatly  dependent  on  the  discretion  of  each  par- 
ticular country,  but  in  which  I  find,  on  the  contrary,  a  great  and 
noble  monument  of  human  wisdom,  founded  on  the  combined  dictates 
of  reason  and  experience — a  precious  inheritance  bequeathed  to  us  by 
the  generations  that  have  gone  before  us,  and  a  firm  foundation  on 
which  we  must  take  care  to  build  whatever  it  may  be  our  part  to  add 
to  their  acquisitions,  if,  indeed,  we  wish  to  maintain  and  to  consolidate 
the  brotherhood  of  nations,  and  to  promote  the  peace  and  welfare  of 
the  world. 

'  Sir,  I  say  the  policy  of  the  noble  lord  tends  to  encourage  and 
confirm  in  us  that  which  is  our  besetting  fault  and  weakness,  both  as 
a  nation  and  as  individuals.  Let  an  Englishman  travel  where  he 
will  as  a  private  person,  he  is  found  in  general  to  be  upright,  high- 
minded,  brave,  liberal,  and  true ;  but  with  all  this,  foreigners  are  too 
often  sensible  of  something  that  galls  them  in  his  presence,  and  I 
apprehend  it  is  because  he  has  too  great  a  tendency  to  self-esteem — 
too  little  disposition  to  regard  the  feelings,  the  habits,  and  the  ideas 
of  others.  Sir,  I  find  this  characteristic  too  plainly  legible  in  the 
policy  of  the  noble  lord.  I  doubt  not  that  use  will  be  made  of  our 
present  debate  to  work  upon  this  peculiar  weakness  of  the  English 
mind.  The  people  will  be  told  that  those  who  oppose  the  motion  are 
governed  by  personal  motives,  have  no  regard  for  public  principles, 
and  no  enlarged  ideas  of  national  policy.  You  will  take  your  case  before 
a  favorable  jury,  and  you  think  to  gain  your  verdict ;  but,  sir,  let  the 
House  of  Commons  be  warned — let  it  warn  itself — against  all  illu- 
sions. There  is  in  this  case  also  a  course  of  appeal.  There  is  an 
appeal,  such  as  the  honorable  and  learned  member  for  Sheffield  has 


146  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

made,  from  the  one  House  of  Parliament  to  the  other.  There  is  a 
further  appeal  from  this  House  of  Parliament  to  the  peop  e  of  Eng- 
land; but,  lastly,  there  is  also  an  appeal  from  the  people  of  England 
to  the  general  sentiment  of  the  civilized  world  ;  and  I,  for  my  part, 
am  of  opinion  that  England  will  stand  shorn  of  a  chief  part  of  her 
glory  and  pride  if  she  shall  be  found  to  have  separated  herself, 
through  the  policy  she  pursues  abroad,  from  the  moral  support 
which  the  general  and  fixed  convictions  of  mankind  afford,  if  the  day 
shall  come  when  she  may  continue  to  excite  the  wonder  and  the  fear 
of  other  nations,  but  in  which  she  shall  have  no  part  in  their  affec- 
tion and  regard. 

'  No,  sir,  let  it  not  be  so ;  let  us  recognize,  and  recognize  with 
frankness,  the  equality  of  the  weak  with  the  strong ;  the  principles 
of  brotherhood  among  nations,  and  of  their  sacred  independence. 
When  we  are  asking  for  the  maintenance  of  the  rights  which  belong 
to  our  fellow-subjects  resident  in  Greece,  let  us  do  as  we  would  be 
done  by,  and  let  us  pay  all  the  respect  to  a  feeble  State,  and  to  the 
infancy  of  free  institutions,  which  we  should  desire  and  should  exact 
from  others,  towards  their  maturity  and  their  strength.  Let  us  refrain 
from  all  gratuitous  and  arbitrary  meddling  in  the  internal  concerns 
of  other  States,  even  as  we  should  resent  the  same  interference  if  it 
were  attempted  to  be  practiced  towards  ourselves.  If  the  noble  lord 
has  indeed  acted  on  these  principles,  let  the  Government  to  which  he 
belongs  have  your  verdict  in  its  favor  ;  but  if  he  has  departed  from 
them,  as  I  contend,  and  as  I  humbly  think  and  urge  upon  you  that  it 
has  been  too  amply  proved,  then  the  House  of  Commons  must  not 
shrink  from  the  performance  of  its  duty,  under  whatever  expectations 
of  momentary  obloquy  or  reproach,  because  we  shall  have  done  what 
is  right ;  we  shall  enjoy  the  peace  of  our  own  consciences,  and 
receive,  whether  a  little  sooner  or  a  little  later,  the  approval  of  the 
public  voice  for  having  entered  our  solemn  protest  against  a  system 
of  policy  which  we  believe,  nay,  which  we  know,  whatever  may  be 
its  first  aspect,  must,  of  necessity,  in  its  final  results  be  unfavorable 
even  to  the  security  of  British  subjects  resident  abroad,  which  it  pro- 
fesses so  much  to  study — unfavorable  to  the  dignity  of  the  country, 
which  the  motion  of  the  honorable  and  learned  member  asserts  it 
preserves — and  equally  unfavorable  to  that  other  great  and  sacred 
object,  which  also  it  suggests  to  our  recollections,  the  maintainance 
of  peace  with  the  nations  of  the  world.' 

This  speech  is  regarded  by  many  as  one  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's finest  efforts.  On  a  division  upon  Mr.  Roebuck's 
motion  the  government  succeeded  in  obtaining  a  majority  of 
46.  Ayes,  310;  Noes,  264." 


MEMBER    FOR   OXFORD.  147 

The  day  after  the  famous  Don  Pacifico  debate,  June  28, 
1850,  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  left  a  card  at  Buckingham  Palace, 
and  proceeded  thence  to  enjoy  a  ride  up  Constitution  iHill, 
when  he  was  thrown  from  his  horse,  and  was  so  severly  in- 
jured that  he  died  four  days  later.  The  tidings  of  his  sad 
and  sudden  departure  from  the  ways  of  men  awoke  univer- 
sal regret.  On  the  3rd  of  July  Mr.  Hume  alluded  to  the 
great  loss  the  nation  had  sustained,  and  moved  that  the 
House  of  Commons  at  once  adjourn.  In  the  House  of 
Lords,  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Lord  Brougham 
referred  in  the  most  impressive  terms  of  respect  to  the 
departed  statesman. 

Lord  Brougham,  who  had  frequently  been  in  strong 
antagonism  with  Sir  Robert  Peel,  paid  this  high  tribute  to 
his  character  and  worth: 

' '  At  the  last  stage  of  his  public  career,  chequered  as  it 
was — and  I  told  him  in  private  that  chequered  it  would 
be — when  he  was  differing  from  those  with  whom  he  had 
been  so  long  connected,  and  from  purely  public-spirited 
feelings  was  adopting  a  course  which  was  so  galling  and  un- 
pleasing  to  them — I  told  him,  I  say,  that  he  must  turn  from 
the  storm  without  to  the  sunshine  of  an  approving  conscience 
within.  Differing  as  we  may  differ  on  the  point  whether 
he  was  right  or  wrong,  disputing  as  we  may  dispute  on  the 
results  of  his  policy,  we  must  all  agree  that  to  the  course 
which  he  believed  to  be  advantageous  to  his  country  he  firmly 
adhered,  and  that  in  pursuing  it  'he  made  sacrifices  com- 
pared with  which  all  the  sacrifices  exacted  from  public  men 
by  a  sense  of  public  duty,  which  I  have  ever  known  or  read 
of,  sink  into  nothing." 

If  Mr  Gladstone's  tribute  to  his  great  chief  was  brief,  it 
was  full  of  intense  feeling.  Supporting  Mr.  Hume's 
motion,  he  said: 

"I  am  quite  sure  that  every  heart  is  much  too  full  to 
allow  us,  at  a  period  so  early,  to  enter  upon  a  consideration 


148  LIFT,    OF    GLADSTONE. 

of  the  amount  of  that  calamity  with  which  the  country  has 
been  visited  in  his,  I  must  even  now  say,  premature  death; 
for  though  he  has  died  full  of  years  and  full  of  honors,  yet 
it  is  a  death  which  our  human  eyes  will  regard  as  premature, 
because  we  had  fondly  hoped  that,  in  whatever  position  he 
was  placed,  by  the  weight  of  his  character,  by  the  splendor 
of  his  talents,  by  the  purity  of  his  virtues,  he  would  still 
have  been  spared  to  render  to  his  country  the  most  essential 
services.  I  will  only,  sir,  quote  those  most  touching  and 
feeling  lines  which  were  applied  by  one  of  the  greatest  poets 
of  this  country  to  the  memory  of  a  man  great  indeed,  but 
yet  not  greater  than  Sir  Robert  Peel: 

'  Now  is  the  stately  column  broke, 
The  beacon  light  is  quenched  in  smoke; 
The  trumpet's  silver  voice  is  still, 
The  warder  silent  on  the  hill.' 

"Sir,  I  will  add  no  more.  In  saying  this  I  have  perhaps, 
said  too  much.  It  might  have  been  better  had  I  simply 
confined  myself  to  seconding  the  motion.  I  am  sure  the 
tribute  of  respect  which  we  now  offer  will  be  all  the  more 
valuable  from  the  silence  with  which  the  motion  is  received, 
and  which  I  well  know  has  not  arisen  from  the  want,  but 
from  the  excess,  of  feeling  on  the  part  of  members  of  this 
House. " 

No  tributes  to  the  dead  statesman  were  more  impressive 
and  pathetic  than  those  of  the  poor  and  needy,  who  regarded 
Sir  Robert  Peel  as  their  savior  from' poverty  and  starvation. 
In,  the  museum  of  the  old  town  of  Leicester  there  stands  a 
bust  purchased  by  the  working  people  of  Leicester  in  con- 
tributions of  a  penny — two  cents  each.  As  they  spoke  of 
him  they  said,  with  deep  and  sincere  gratitude,  "He  gave 
us  untaxed  bread." 

A  brief  reference  will  not  be  out  of  place  here  to  the  first 
of  those  great  exhibitions  of  the  products  and  industries  of 
nations  which  seemed  to  reach  their  grand  culmination  in 
the  marvelous  World's  Fair  of  Chicago,  in  the  year  1893. 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  149 

These  exhibitions  were  healthful  signs  of  the  times.  The 
purpose  of  these  gatherings  was  to  bring  about  a  more 
fraternal  feeling  between  the  neighboring  nations;  to  inspire 
them  with  zeal  for  the  more  perfect  development  of  the 
resources  of  their  respective  countries;  and  to  aid  the 
coming  of  the  good  time  that  alas!  seems  far  distant. 
Yet  when  the  poet's  dream  should  be  realized: 

When  the  war-drum  throbs  no  longer, 
And  the  battle-flags  are  furled; 
In  the  Parliament  of  men, 
The  Federation  of  the  World. 

The  first  idea  of  the  Exhibition  was  conceived  by  Prince 
Albert;  and  it  was  his  energy  and  influence  which  succeeded 
in  carrying  the  idea  into  practical  execution.  Probably  no 
influence  less  great  than  that  which  his  station  gave  to  the 
Prince  would  have  prevailed  to  carry  to  success  so  difficult 
an  enterprise.  There  had  been  industrial  exhibitions  before 
on  a  small  scale  and  of  local  limit;  but  if  the  idea  of  an  ex- 
hibition in  which  all  the  nations  of  the  world  were  to  com- 
pete had  occurred  to  other  minds  before,  as  it  may  well 
have  done,  it  was  merely  as  a  vague  thought,  a  day-dream, 
without  any  claim  to  a  practical  realization.  Prince  Albert 
was  President  of  the  Society  of  Arts,  and  this  position  se- 
cured him  a  platform  for  the  effective  promulgation1  of  his 
ideas.  On  June  30,  1849,  he  called  a  meeting  of  the  Royal 
Society  at  Buckingham  Palace.  He  proposed  that  the  So- 
ciety should  undertake  the  initiative  in  the  promotion  of  an 
exhibition  of  the  works  of  all  nations.  The  main  idea  of 
Prince  Albert  was  that  the  exhibition  should  be  divided 
into  four  great  sections — the  first  to  contain  raw  materials 
and  products;  the  second  machinery  for  ordinary  industrial 
and  productive  purposes  and  mechanical  inventions  of  the 
more  ingenious  kind ;  the  third,  manufactured  articles;  and 
the  fourth,  sculpture,  models,  and  the  illustration  of  the 
plastic  arts  generally.  The  idea  was  at  once  taken  up  by 


150  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

the  Society  of  Arts,  and  by  their  agency  spread  abroad. 
On  October  17th  in  the  same  year  a  meeting  of  merchants 
and  bankers  was  held  in  London  to  promote  the  success  of 
the  undertaking.  In  the  first  few  days  of  1850  a  formal 
commission  was  appointed  ' '  for  the  promotion  of  the  Ex- 
hibition of  the  Works  of  All  Nations,  to  be  holden  in  the 
year  1851."  Prince  Albert  was  appointed  President  of  the 
Commission. 

The  question  of  the  construction  of  a  building  for  all  the 
world  to  meet  in,  at  least  by  representation,  presented  a 
great  difficulty.  Happily,  a  sudden  inspiration  struck  Mr. 
Joseph  Paxton,  who  was  then  in  charge  of  the  Duke  of 
Devonshire's  superb  grounds  at  Chatsworth.  Why  not  try 
glass  and  iron  ?  he  asked  himself.  Why  not  build  a  palace 
of  glass  and  iron  large  enough  to  cover  all  the  intended  con- 
tents of  the  Exhibition,  and  which  should  be  at  once  light, 
beautiful  and  cheap?  Mr.  Paxton  sketched  out  his  plan 
hastily,  and  the  idea  was  eagerly  accepted  by  the  Royal 
Commissioners.  He  made  many  improvements  afterwards 
in  his  design  ;  but  the  palace  of  glass  and  iron  arose  within 
the  specified  time  on  the  green  turf  of  Hyde  Park.  The 
idea  so  happily  hit  upon  was  serviceable  in  more  ways  than 
one  to  the  success  of  the  exhibition.  It  made  the  building 
itself  as  much  an  object  of  curiosity  and  wonder  as  the  col- 
lections under  its  crystal  roof.  Of  the  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands who  came  to  the  Exhibition,  a  good  proportion  was 
drawn  to  Hyde  Park  rather  by  a  wish  to  see  Paxton 's  pal- 
ace of  glass  than  all  the  wonders  of  industrial  and  plastic 
art  that  it  enclosed  Lord  Palmerston  said :  ' '  The  build- 
ing itself  is  far  more  worth  seeing  than  anything  in  it, 
though  many  of  its  contents  are  worthy  of  admiration." 

The  Queen  herself  has  written  a  very  interesting  account 
of  the  success  of  the  opening  day.  Her  description  is  inter- 
esting as  an  expression  of  the  feelings  of  the  writer,  the 
sense  of  profound  relief  and  rapture,  as  well  as  for  the  sake 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  151 

of  the  picture  it  gives  of  the  ceremonial  itself.  The  en- 
thusiasm of  the  wife  over  the  complete  success  of  the  pro- 
ject on  which  her  husband  had  set  his  heart  and  staked  his 
name  is  simple  and  touching.  If  the  importance  of  the 
undertaking,  and  the  amount  of  fame  it  was  to  bring  to  its 
author  may  seem  a  little  overdone,  not  many  readers  will 
complain  of  the  womanly  and  wifely  feeling  which  could 
not  be  denied  such  fervent  expression. 

"The  great  event,"  wrote  the  Queen,  "has  taken  place 
— a  complete  and  beautiful  triumph —  a  glorious  and  touch- 
ing sight,  one  which  I  shall  ever  be  proud  of  for  my  beloved 
Albert  and  my  country.  .  .  .  The  Park  presented  a 
wonderful  spectacle — crowds  streaming  through  it,  car- 
riages and  troops  passing,  quite  like  the  Coronation  day, 
and  for  me  the  same  anxiety — no,  much  greater  anxiety, 
on  account  of  my  beloved  Albert.  The  day  was  bright,  and 
all  bustle  and  excitement.  .  .  .  The  Green  Park  and 
Hyde  Park  were  one  densely  crowded  mass  of  human  beings 
in  the  highest  good  barnor  and  most  enthusiastic.  I  never 
saw  Hyde  Park  look  as  it  did — as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach. 
A  little  rain  fell  just  as  we  started,  but  before  we  came  near 
the  Crystal  Palace  the  sun  shone  and  gleamed  upon  the 
gigantic  edifice,  upon  which  the  flags  of  all  nations  were 
floating.  .  .  .  The  glimpse  of  the  transcept  through 
the  iron  gates,  the  waving  palms,  flowers,  statues,  myriads 
of  people  filling  the  galleries  and  seats  around,  with  the 
flourish  of  trumpets  as  we  entered,  gave  us  a  sensation 
which  I  can  never  forget,  and  I  felt  much  moved. 

The  sight  as  we  came  to  the  middle  was  magical — so  vast, 
so  glorious,  so  touching — one  felt,  as  so  many  did  whom  I 
have  since  spoken  to,  filled  with  devotion — more  so  than  by 
any  service  I  have  ever  heard.  The  tremendous  cheers,  the 
joy  expressed  in  every  face,  the  immensity  of  the  building, 
the  mixture  of  palms,  flowers,  trees,  statues,  fountains  ;  the 
organ  (with  two  hundred  instruments  and  six  hundred  voices, 


152  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

v 

which  sounded  like  nothing),  and  my  beloved  husband  the 
author  of  this  peace  festival,  which  united  the  industry  of 
all  nations  of  the  earth.  All  this  was  moving  indeed,  and  it 
was  and  is  a  day  to  live  forever  !  God  bless  my  dearest 
Albert !  God  bless  my  dearest  country,  which  has  shown 
itself  so  great  to-day  !  One  felt  so  grateful  to  the  great 
God  who  seemed  to  pervade  all,  and  to  bless  all !" 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  in  this  great  movement,  Mr. 
Gladstone  took  pleasant  and  helpful  interest.  Horace 
Greeley  was  one  of  the  American  Commissioners,  and 
unused  though  he  was  to  burn  incense  at  any  shrine,  he 
was  carried  away  by  the  grandeur  of  the  scene,  and  as  he 
stood  in  this  palace  of  crystal  beauty  and  thought  of  what 
it  stood  for,  he  confessed  that  the  poet's  dream  of  a  golden 
age  might  come  true  after -all! 

After  the  exhibition  was  closed,  the  main  portion  of  the 
building  was  transferred  to  Sydenham  a  few  miles  south  of 
London,  where  it  has  been  for  nearly  half  a  century,  and 
still  is,  the  grandest  and  most  complete  place  of  recreation 
and  entertainment  in  the  world. 

Towards  the  close  of  this  year,  1851,  owing  to  the  illness  of 
one  of  his  children,  it  became  necessary  for  Mr.  Gladstone 
to  journey  southward.  He  went  to  Naples,  and  while  there 
made  such  discoveries  with  regard  to  the  hideous  inhumanity 
which  prevailed  in  high  quarters,  that  very  shortly  all  Eu- 
rope rang  with  the  voice  of  his  righteous  indignation. 

Mr.  Gladstone  remained  in  Naples  for  about  four  months. 
He  had  been  there  but  a  very  short  time,  when  he  heard 
such  fearful  accounts  of  thousands  of  people  who  were  flung 
into  prison,  suffering  every  conceivable  indignity  for  pure- 
ly imaginary  offenses,  that  he  determined  upon  visiting 
such  of  the  prisoners  as  he  could,  to  ascertain  for  himself 
what  truth  there  was  in  the  reports  he  had  heard.  He  found 
things  worse  than  they  had  been  described  to  him.  Men  of 
all  classes  were  arrested  on  suspicion,  or  even  without  sus- 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  153 

picion,  and  thrown  with  the  ordinary  criminals;  and 
many  of  them  loaded  with  chains,  were  left  there  for 
months,  sometimes  as  long  as  a  couple  of  years,  before  they 
were  even  put  upon  their  trial,  often  because  it  was  not 
possible  to  work  up  a  case  against  them:  The  prisons  were 
terribly  overcrowded,  dirty  and  unhealthy — so  unhealthy 
indeed,  were  many  of  these  dungeons  in  which  the  prisoners 
were  herded  together,  that  even  the  doctors  dared  not  visit 
them! 

On  his  return  to  England,  Mr.  Gladstone  embodied  the 
result  of  his  investigations  in  two  letters  to  the  Earl  of 
Aberdeen.  The  letters  describe  a  condition  of  things  that 
was  "an  outrage  upon  religion,  upon  civilization,  upon 
humanity  and  upon  decency." 

"These  pages  have  been  written  in  the  hope  that 
Dy  thus  making  through  the  press,  rather  than  in  another 
mode,  the  rejoinder  to  -the  Neapolitan  reply  which  was 
doubtless  due  from  me,  I  might  still,  as  far  as  depended  on 
me,  keep  the  question  on  its  true  ground,  and  not  of  Eng_ 
land  but  of  Christendom  and  of  mankind.  Again  I  express 
that  this  may  be  my  closing  word.  I  express  the  hope  that 
it  may  not  become  a  hard  necessity-to  keep  this  controversy 
alive,  until  it  reaches  its  one  only  possible  issue,  which  no 
power  of  man  can  possibly  intercept.  I  express  the  hope 
that  while  there  is  time,  while  there  is  quiet,  while  dignity 
may  yet  be  saved  in  showing  mercy,  and  in  the  blessed  work 
of  restoring  Justice  to  her  seat,  the  Government  of  Naples 
may  set  its  hand  in  earnest  to  the  work  of  real  and  searching, 
however  quiet,  reform;  that  it  may  not  become  unavoidable 
to  reiterate  these  appeals  from  the  hand  of  power  to  the  one 
common  heart  of  mankind;  to  produce  those  painful  docu- 
ments, those  harrowing  descriptions,  which  might  be  sup- 
plied in  rank  abundance,  of  which  I  have  scarcely  given  the 
faintest  idea  or  sketch,  and  which,  if  they  were  laid  from 
time  to  time  before  the  world,  would,  bear  down  like  a  de- 


154:  LIFE.  OF    GLADSTONE. 

luge  every  effort  at  apology  or  palliation,  and  would  cause 
all  that  has  recently  been  made  known  to  be  forgotten  and 
eclipsed  in  deeper  horrors  yet;  lest  the  strength  of  offended 
and  indignant  humanity  should  rise  up  as  a  giant  refreshed 
with  wine,  and  while  sweeping  away  these  abominations 
from  the  eye  of  Heaven,  should  sweep  away  along  with 
them  things  pure  and  honest,  ancient,  venerable,  salutary 
to  mankind,  crowned  with  the  glories  of  the  past,  and  still 
capable  of  bearing  future  fruit." 

But  the  following  may  be  regarded  as  the  most  impressive 
passage  of  his  terrible  indictment: 

"  It  is  such  violation  of  human  and  written  law  as  this, 
carried  on  for  the  purpose  of  violating  every  other  law,  un- 
written and  eternal,  human  and  divine;  it  is  the  wholesale 
persecution  of  virtue,  when  united  with  intelligence,  operat- 
ing upon  such  a  scale  that  entire  classes  may  with  truth  be 
said  to  be  its  object,  so  that  the  government  is  in  bitter  and 
cruel,  as  well  as  utterly  illegal,  hostility  to  whatever  in  the 
nation  really  lives  and  moves,  and  forms  the  mainspring  of 
practical  progress  and  improvement.  It  is  the  awful  pro- 
fanation of  public  religion,  by  its  notorious  alliance  in  the 
governing  powers,  with  the  violation  of  every  moral  rule 
under  the  stimulants  of  fear  and  vengeance.  It  is  the  perfect 
prostitution  of  the  judicial  office  which  has  made  it,  under 
veils  only  too  threadbare  and  transparent,  the  degraded  re- 
cipient of  the  vilest  and  clumsiest  forgeries,  got  up  wilfully 
and  deliberately  by  the  immediate  advisers  of  the  crown  for 
the  purpose  of  destroying  the  peace,  the  freedom,  aye,  and 
even  if  not  by  capital  sentences,  the  life  of  men  amongst 
the  most  virtuous,  upright,  intelligent,  distinguished  and 
refined  of  the  whole  community. 

The  effect  of  all  this  is  a  total  inversion  of  all  the  moral 
and  social  ideas.  Law,  instead  of  being  respected,  is 
odious.  Force,  and  not  affection,  is  the  foundation  of 
^pvernment.  There  is  no  association,  but  a  violent  an- 
tagonism, between  the  idea  of  freedom  and  that  of  order. 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  155 

The  governing  power,  which  teaches  of  itself  that  it  is  the 
image  of  God  upon  earth,  is  clothed  in  the  view  of  the  over- 
whelming majority  of  the  thinking  public  with  all  the  vices 
for  its  attributes.  I  have  seen  and  heard  the  strong  and 
too  true  expression  used,  "This  is  the  negation  of  God 
erected  into  a  system  of  Government.  " 

These  letters  created  the  most  intense  indignation.  But 
was  there  no  issue  to  be  taken  ?  Was  there  no  moral  right 
to  interfere  ?  The  case  had  some  points  that  compare  with 
our  right  to  declare  war  with  Spain. 

Before  the  House  of  Commons  was  prorogued,  attention 
was  drawn  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  statements.  Sir  De  Lacy 
Evans  put  the  following  question  to  the  Foreign  Secretary: 

' '  From  a  publication  entitled  to  the  highest  consideration, 
it  appears  that  there  are  at  present  above  20,000  persons 
confined  in  the  prisons  of  Naples  for  alleged  political  offenses; 
that  these  prisoners  have,  with  extremely  few  exceptions, 
been  thus  immured  in  violation  of  the  existing  laws  of  the 
country,  and  without  the  slightest  legal  trial  or  public  in- 
quiry into  their  respective  cases;  that  they  include  a  late 
Prime  Minister  and  a  majority  of  the  late  Neapolitan  Par- 
liament, as  well  as  a  large  proportion  of  the  most  respectable 
and  intelligent  classes  of  society;  that  these  prisoners  are 
chained  two  and  two  together;  that  these  chains  are  never 
undone,  day  or  night,  for  any  purpose  whatever,  and  that 
they  are  suffering  refinements  of  cruelty  and  barbarity,  un- 
known in  any  other  civilized  country.  It  is  consequently, 
asked  if  the  British  Minister  at  the  Court  of  Naples  has  been 
instructed  to  employ  his  good  offices  in  the  cause  of  human- 
ity, for  the  diminution  of  these  lamentable  severities,  and 
with  what  result  ? " 

Lord  Palmerston  replied  that  her  Majesty's  Government 
had  received  with  pain  a  confirmation  of  the  impressions 
which  had  been  created  by  various  accounts  they  had  received 
from  other  quarters,  of  the  very  unfortunate  and  calamitous 


156  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

condition  of  the  kingdom  of  Naples.  The  British  Govern- 
ment, however,  had  not  deemed  it  a  part  of  their  duty  to 
make  any  formal  representations  to  the  Government  of 
Naples  on  a  matter  that  related  entirely  to  the  internal 
affairs  of  that  country. 

"At  the  same  time,  " Ms  lordship  continued,  "Mr.  Glad- 
stone, whom  I  may  freely  name,  though  not  in  his  capacity 
of  a  member  of  Parliament,  has  done  himself,  I  think,  very 
great  honor  by  the  course  he  pursued  at  Naples,  and  by 
the  course  he  has  followed  since;  for  I  think  that  when  you 
see  an  English  gentleman,  who  goes  to  pass  a  winter  at 
Naples,  instead  of  confining  himself  to  those  amusements 
that  abound  in  that  city,  instead  of  diving  into  volcanoes 
and  exploring  excavated  cities,  when  we  see  him  going  to 
the  courts  of  justice,  visiting  prisons,  descending  into  dun- 
geons, and  examining  great  numbers  of  the  cases  of  unfor- 
tunate victims  of  illegality  and  injustice,  with  a  view  after- 
wards to  enlist  public  opinion  in  the  endeavor  to  remedy 
those  abuses,  I  think  that  is  a  course  that  does  honor  to 
the  person  who  pursues  it.  And  concurring  in  feeling  with 
him  that  the  influence  of  public  opinion  in  Europe  might 
have  some  useful  effect  in  setting  such  matters  right,  I 
thought  it  my  duty  to  send  copies  of  his  pamphlet  to  our 
Ministers  at  the  various  Courts  of  Europe,  directing  them 
to  give  to  each  Government  copies  of  the  pamphlet,  in 
the  hope  that  by  affording  them  an  opportunity  of  read- 
ing it,  they  might  be  led  to  use  their  influence  in  promoting 
what  is  the  object  of  my  honorable  and  gallant  friend — 
a  remedy  for  the  evils  to  which  he  has  referred.  "  This 
announcement  by  the  Foreign  Secretary  was  warmly 
cheered  by  the  House.  A  few  days  afterward  Lord  Pal- 
merston  was  requested  by  Prince  Castelcicala  to  forward  the 
reply  of  the  Neapolitan  Government  to  the  different  Euro- 
pean Courts  to  which  Mr.  Gladstone's  pamphlet  had  been 
sent.  His  lordship,  witn  his  wonted  courage  and  independent 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  157 

spirit,  replied  that  he  "must  decline  being  accessory  to  the 
circulation  of  a  pamphlet  which,  in  my  opinion,  does  no 
credit  to  its  writer,  or  the  Government  which  he  defends,  or 
to  the  political  party  of  which  he  professes  to  be  the  cham- 
pion. "  He  also  informed  the  Prince  "that  information  re- 
ceived from  other  sources  led  him  to  the  conclusion  that 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  by  no  means  overstated  the  various  evils 
which  he  had  described ;  and  he,  Lord  Palmerston,  regretted 
that  the  Neapolitan  Government  had  not  set  to  work  ear- 
nestly and  effectually  to  correct  the  manifold  and  grave 
abuses  which  clearly  existed." 

Lord  Palmerston,  indeed,  reflected  the  national  sentiment 
of  England  when  he  declared  from  his  place  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  that  ' '  Mr.  Gladstone  had  done  himself  honor  by 
the  course  he  had  thus  pursued  in  relation  to  the  Neapolitan 
prisons.  He  had  lifted  his  voice  with  energy  and  effect  on 
behalf  of  oppressed  humanity,  and  in  condemnation  of  one 
of  the  worst  and  most  despotic  Governments  that  have  ever 
afflicted  mankind.  This  episode  remains,  and  ever  will  re- 
main, in  the  estimation  both  of  his  fellow-countrymen  and 
the  friends  of  justice  and  freedom  throughout  the  world, 
one  of  the  brightest  in  his  career." 

The  immediate  result  of  this  chivalrous  advocacy  was 
perhaps  not  commensurate  with  the  storm  of  indignation  it 
aroused.  But  it  bore  good  fruit  at  last  when  the  heroic 
Garibaldi  and  a  free  people  marched  into  Naples,  and  King 
Bomba  and  his  vicious  court  fled. 

On  the  Uth  of  September,  1852,  the  duke  of  Welling- 
ton, who  had  been  for  long  years  the  pride  and  glory  of 
his  country,  passed  into  the  silent  land.  One  of  the  grand- 
est public  funerals  England  had  ever  seen  was  awarded  the 
hero  of  Waterloo.  On  the  assembly  of  Parliament  many 
eloquent  tributes  were  paid  to  the  memory  of  the  man  of 
iron  nerve  and  deathless  purpose.  The  following  is  part  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  eloquence: 


158  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

'  'While  many  of  the  actions  of  his  life,  while  many  of 
the  qualities  he  possessed,  are  unattainable  by  others,  there 
are  lessons  which  we  may  all  derive  from  the  life  and  ac- 
tions of  that  illustrious  man.  It  may  never  be  given  to 
another  subject  of  the  British  Crown  to  perform  services 
so  brilliant  as  he  performed;  it  may  never  be  given  to 
another  man  to  hold  the  sword  which  was  to  gain  the  inde- 
pendence of  Europe,  to  rally  the  nations  around  it,  and 
while  England  saved  herself  by  her  constancy,  to  save 
Europe  by  her  example;  it  may  never  be  given  to  another 
man,  after  having  attained  such  eminence,  after  such  an 
unexampled  series  of  victories,  to  show  equal  moderation  in 
peace  as  he  has  shown  greatness  in  war,  and  to  devote  the 
remainder  of  his  life  to  the  cause  of  internal  and  external 
peace  for  that  country  which  he  has  so  served;  it  may 
never  be  given  to  another  man  to  have  equal  authority  both 
with  the  Sovereign  he  served,  and  with  the  Senate  of  which 
he  was  to  the  end  a  venerated  member;  it  may  never  be 
given  to  another  man  after  such  a  career  to  preserve  even 
to  the  last,  the  full  possession  of  those  great  faculties  with 
which  he  was  endowed,  and  to  carry  on  the  services  of  one 
of  the  most  important  departments  of  the  State  with  unex- 
ampled regularity  and  success,  even  to  the  latest  day  of  his 
life.  These  are  circumstances,  these  are  qualities,  which 
may  never  occur  again  in  the  history  of  this  country.  But 
there  are  qualities  which  the  Duke  of  Wellington  displayed, 
of  which  we  may  all  act  in  humble  imitation — that  sincere 
and  unceasing  devotion  to  our  country;  that  honest  and 
upright  determination  to  act  for  the  benefit  of  the  country 
on  every  occasion;  that  devoted  loyalty,  which,  while  it 
made  him  ever  anxious  to  serve  the  Crown,  never  induced 
him  to  conceal  from  the  Sovereign  that  which  he  believed 
to  be  the  truth;  that  devotedness  in  the  constant  perform- 
ance of  duty;  that  temperance  of  his  life,  which  enabled 
him  at  all  times  to  give  his  mind  and  his  faculties  to  the 


MEMBER    FOR   OXFORD.  159 

services  which  he  was  called  on  to  perform;  that  regular, 
consistent,  and  unceasing  piety  by  which  he  was  disting- 
uished at  all  times  in  his  life.  These  are  qualities  that  are 
attainable  by  others,  and  these  are  qualities  which  should 
not  be  lost  as  an  example." 

Mr.  Gladstone  himself  declared  that  so  late  as  1851  he 
had  not  left  the  Tory  party.  Still,  it  was  as  clear  as  the 
day  that  he  was  marching  steadily  toward  Liberalism.  His 
great  and  trusted  leader  was  dead.  New  questions  were 
arising  that  demanded  the  most  careful  consideration.  Old 
questions  were  assuming  still  graver  importance.  The 
world  was  marching  on.  In  1852  the  first  Derby-Disraeli 
administration  was  formed.  Mr.  Disraeli  became  Chancel- 
lor of  the  Exchequer,  and  Lord  Derby  being  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  Mr.  Disraeli  became  also  leader  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  Mr.  Gladstone,  being  a  pronounced  Peelite,  did 
not  retain  office  under  this  administration. 

In  December  of  1852  Mr.  Disraeli  introduced  his  budget} 
which  provoked  a  good  deal  of  severe  criticism,  to  which  he 
replied  with  scoffs  and  gibes  and  sarcasms,  Sir  James 
Graham  being  made  the  special  subject  of  attack.  As  Mr. 
Disraeli  sat  down  Mr.  Gladstone  sprang  to  his  feet,  and  the 
battle  that  was  waged  so  many  years  between  these  two 
great  political  gladiators  began.  In  a  few  minutes  the 
House  was  wildly  cheering  the  intrepid  member  for  Oxford. 
Mr.  Gladstone  began  by  telling  the  right  honorable  gentle- 
man that ' '  he  was  not  entitled  to  charge  with  insolence  men 
of  as  high  position  and  of  as  high  character  in  the  House  as 
himself. "  Having  been  prevented  by  the  cheers  of  the 
House  from  completing  this  sentence,  Mr.  Gladstone  thus 
concluded  : 

' '  I  must  tell  the  right  honorable  gentleman  that  he  is  not 
entitled  to  say  to  my  right  honorable  friend,  the  member 
for  Carlisle,  that  he  regards  but  does  not  respect  him.  And 
I  must  tell  him  that  whatever  else  he  has  learned,  and  he 


160  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

has  learned  much — he  has  not  learned  to  keep  within  those 
limits  of  discretion,  of  moderation  and  of  forbearance,  that 
ought  to  restrain  the  conduct  and  language  of  every  mem- 
ber in  this  House,  the  disregard  of  which,  while  it  is  an 
offense  in  the  meanest  among  us,  is  an  offense  of  tenfold 
weight  when  committed  by  the  leader  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons." 

When  Mr.  Gladstone  concluded,  having  torn  the  propo- 
sals of  the  Budget  to  shreds,  a  majority  followed  him  into 
the  division  lobby,  and  Mr.  Disraeli  and  his  government 
were  beaten  by  nineteen  votes.  The  first  encounter  be- 
tween these  great  rivals  resulted  in  a  pronounced  triumph 
for  Mr.  Gladstone. 

Lord  Derby  resigned.  Politics  were  plunged  into  what 
seemed  a  condition  of  hopeless  confusion  and  excitement. 
At  last  a  coalition  government  of  Whigs,  Peelites  and  even 
Radicals  was  formed.  In  this  government  Lord  Aberdeen 
was  Prime  Minister,  Lord  John  Russell  was  President  of 
the  Council,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer. If  Mr.  Gladstone  had  been  making  friends  in  the 
Camp  of  Liberalism,  he  was  making  bitter  enemies  in  the 
Tents  of  Toryism.  After  having  accepted  office  under 
Lord  Aberdeen,  he  had  of  course  to  seek  re-election  at  the 
hands  of  the  University  of  Oxford.  His  seat  was  warmly 
if  not  bitterly  contested. 

The  nomination  took  place  on  the  4th  of  January.  Mr. 
Gladstone  was  proposed  by  Dr.  Hawkins,  Provost  of  Oriel, 
and  Mr.  Perceval  by  Archdeacon  Denison.  In  accordance 
with  custom  at  University  elections,  neither  candidate  was 
present.  The  opposition  to  the  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer was  based  chiefly  on  his  votes  on  ecclesiastical  ques- 
tions, and  on  his  acceptance  of  office  in  a  hybrid  Ministry. 

Two  days  after  the  nomination,  the  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  wrote  the  following  letter  to  the  Chairman  of 
his  Election  Committee: 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.    '  161 

' '  Unless  I  had  as  full  and  clear  conviction  that  the  inter- 
ests of  the  Church,  whether  as  relates  to  the  legislative 
functions  of  Parliament,  or  the  impartial  and  wise  recom- 
mendation of  fit  persons  to  her  Majesty,  for  high  ecclesias- 
tical offices,  were  at  least  as  safe  in  the  hands  of  Lord 
Aberdeen  as  in  those  of  Lord  Derby  (though  I  would  on  no 
account  disparage  Lord  Derby's  personal  sentiments  towards 
the  Church),  I  should  not  have  accepted  office  under  Lord 
Aberdeen.  As  regards  the  second,  if  it  be  thought  that 
during  twenty  years  of  public  life,  or  that  during  the  lat- 
ter part  of  them,  I  have  failed  to  give  guarantees  of  attach- 
ment to  the  interests  of  the  Church,  to  such  as  so  think,  I 
can  offer  neither  apology  nor  pledge.  To  those  who  think 
otherwise,  I  tender  the  assurance  that  I  have  not  by  my  re- 
cent assumption  of  office,  made  any  change  whatever  in  that 
particular,  or  in  any  principles  relating  to  it. " 

The  poll  lasted  for  fifteen  days,  and  at  its  close  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  found  to  have  been  returned.  The  numbers  were — 
Gladstone,  1,022;  Perceval,  898— majority,  124. 

On  the  18th  of  April,  1853,  he  delivered  the  first  of  what 
has  proved  to  be  a  long  series  of  budget  speeches  unsur- 
passed in  parliamentary  history.  There  are  some  members 
in  the  present  House  of  Commons  who  have  a  vivid  recol- 
lection of  the  occasion.  Expectation  stood  on  tiptoe.  The 
House  was  crowded  in  every  part,  and  it  remained  crowded 
and  tireless,  while  for  the  space  of  five  hours  Mr.  Gladstone 
poured  forth  a  flood  of  oratory  which  made  arithmetic  aston- 
ishingly easy,  and  gave  an  unaccustomed  grace  to  statistics. 
Merely  as  an  oratorical  display,  the  speech  was  a  rare  treat 
to  the  crowded  assembly  that  heard  it,  and  to  the  in- 
numerable company  which  some  hours  later  read  it.  But 
the  form  was  rendered  doubly  enchanting  by  the  substance. 
It  was  clear  that  Mr.  Gladstone  could  not  only  adorn  the 
exposition  of  finance  with  the  glamour  of  oratory,  but  could 
control  the  developments  of  finance  with  a  master  hand. 


162  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

His  scheme  was  a  bold  one.  The  young  and  untried 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  found  himself  with  a  surplus 
of  something  over  three-quarters  of  a  million.  This  was 
not  much;  but  was  enough  to  make  things  pleasant  in  one 
or  two  influential  quarters,  and  he  might  have  hoped  for  a 
fuller  purse  next  year.  To  have  taken  this  course,  to  have 
dribbled  away  the  surplus;  practically  to  have  left  matters 
where  they  stood,  would,  moreover,  have  saved  him  an  in- 
finitude of  trouble  and  relieved  him  from  a  tremendous  risk. 
Scorning  these  considerations,  plunging  into  the  troubled 
sea  with  the  confident  daring  of  genius,  he  positively  in- 
creased taxation,  chiefly  by  manipulation  of  the  income  tax, 
and  was  thereby  enabled,  in  a  wholesale  manner  that  seems 
scarcely  less  than  magical,  to  reduce  or  absolutely  abolish 
the  duties  on  nearly  three  hundred  articles  of  commerce  in 
daily  use.  The  secret  of  the  financier's  necromancy  lay  in 
that  sound  principal  which  he  may  be  said  to  have  inaugu- 
rated in  British  finance,  and  under  the  extended  application 
of  which  trade  and  commerce  have  advanced  by  leaps  and 
bounds.  He  reckoned  upon  that  property  in  national 
finance  known  as  the  ' '  elasticity  of  revenue, "  now  habitu- 
ally, as  a  matter  of  ordinary  calculation,  counted  upon  to 
make  good  deficiencies  immediately  accruing  upon  reduc- 
tion of  taxation. 

A  contemporary  writer  states  that  he  never  once  paused 
for  a  word  during  the  whole  of  the  five  hours,  and  awards 
to  him  the  palm  of  an  unsurpassed  fluency  and  a  choice 
diction.  l '  The  impression  produced  upon  the  minds  of  the 
crowded  and  brilliant  assembly  by  Mr.  Gladstone's  evident 
mastery  and  grasp  of  the  subject  was,  that  England  had  at 
length  found  a  skillful  financier,  upon  whom  the  mantle  of 
Peel  had  descended.  The  cheering  when  the  right  hon. 
gentleman  sat  down  was  of  the  most  enthusiastic  and  pro- 
longed character,  and  his  friends  and  colleagues  hastened  to 
tender  him  their  warm  congratulations  upon  the  distin- 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  163 

guished  success  he  had  achieved  in  his  first  budget. "  When 
the  louder  plaudits  had  subsided,  a  hum  of  approbation 
still  went  round  the  House,  and  extended  even  to  the  fair 
occupants  of  the  ladies'  gallery. 

The  Budget  itself  was  a  marvel  of  ingenious  and  far- 
seeing  statesmanship.  It  was  a  grand  effort  to  equalize 
taxation.  It  lifted  many  burdens  that  oppressed  the  poorer 
classes  and  very  largely  obstructed  business.  It  took  off 
no  less  than  $25,000,000  of  customs  and  excise  duties;  and 
it  balanced  these  remissions  by  applying  the  succession  duty 
to  real  property,  increasing  the  duty  on  spirits,  and  extend- 
ing the  income  tax. 

In  dealing  with  the  income  tax,  Mr.  Gladstone  said: 
' '  Depend  upon  it,  when  you  come  to  close  quarters  with 
this  subject,  when  you  come  to  measure  and  see  the  re- 
spective relations  of  intelligence  and  labor  and  pro- 
perty, and  when  you  come  to  represent  these  relations 
in  arithmetical  results,  you  are  undertaking  an  operation 
which  I  should  say  was  beyond  the  power  of  man  to 
conduct  with  satisfaction,  but  which,  at  any  rate,  is  an 
operation  to  which  you  ought  not  constantly  to  recur;  for  if 
as  my  honorable  friend  once  said  very  properly,  this  country 
could  not  bear  a  revolution  once  a  year,  I  will  venture  to 
say  that  it  could  not  bear  a  reconstruction  of  the  income-tax 
once  a  year.  Whatever  you  do  in  regard  to  the  income-tax, 
you  must  be  bold,  you, must  be  intelligible,  you  must  be 
decisive.  You  must  not  palter  with  it.  If  you  do,  I  have 
striven  at  least  to  point  out  as  well  as  my  feeble  powers  will 
permit,  the  almost  desecration  I  would  say,  certainly  the 
gross  breach  of  duty  to  your  country,  of  which  you  will 
be  found  guilty,  in  thus  jeopardizing  one  of  the  most  valu- 
able among  all  its  material  resources.  I  believe  it  to  be  of 
vital  importance,  whether  you  keep  this  tax  or  whether  you 
part  with  it,  that  you  should  either  keep  it  or  leave  it  in  a 
state  in  which  it  would  be  fit  for  service  in  an  emergency, 


16i  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

and  that  it  will  be  impossible    to   do   if  you   break  up  the 
>basis  of  your  income  tax." 

In  the  following  magnificent  peroration,  Mr.  Gladstone 
closed  one  of  the  most  wonderful  financial  statements  the 
world  has  ever  heard: 

"If  the  Committee  have  followed  me,  they  will  understand  that 
we  stand  on  the  principle  that  the  income-tax  ought  to  be  markt-d  as 
a  temporary  measure  ;  that  the  public  feeling  that  relief  should  be 
given  to  intelligence  and  skill  as  compared  with  property  ought  to  be 
met,  and  may  be  met ;  that  the  income-tax  in  its  operation  ought  to 
be  mitigated  by  every  rational  means,  compatible  with  its  integrity, 
and,  above  all,  that  it  should  be  associated  in  the  last  term  of  its 
existence,  as  it  was  in  the  first,  with  those  remissions  of  indirect 
taxation  which  have  so  greatly  redounded  to  the  profit  of  this  coun- 
try, and  have  set  so  admirable  an  example — an  example  that  has 
already  in  some  quarters  proved  contagious  to  other  nations  of  the 
earth.  These  are  the  principles  on  which  we  stand,  and  the  figures 
I  have  shown  you  that  if  you  grant  us  the  taxes  which  we  ask,  the 
moderate  amount  of  812,500,000  in  the  whole,  and  much  less  than 
that  sum  for  the  present  year,  you,  or  the  Parliament  which  may  be 
in  existence  in  1860,  will  be  in  the  condition,  if  you  so  think  fit  to 
part  with  the  income-tax.  I  am  almost  afraid  to  look  at  the  clock, 
shamefully  reminding  me,  as  it  must,  how  long  I  have  trespassed  on 
the  time  of  the  House.  All  I  can  say  in  apology  is,  that  I  have 
endeavored  to  keep  closely  to  the  topics  which  I  had  before  me — 

" — immensum  spatiis  confecimus  sequor, 

Et  jam  tempus  equum  fumantia  solvere  colla." 

"These  are  the  proposals  of  the  Government.  They  may  be 
approved,  or  they  may  be  condemned,  but  I  have  this  full  confidence, 
that  it  will  be  admitted  that  we  have  not  sought  to  evade  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  position ;  that  we  have  not  concealed  those  difficulties 
either  from  ourselves  or  from  others  ;  that  we  have  not  attempted  to 
counteract  them  by  narrow  or  flimsy  expedients  ;  that  we  have  pre- 
pared plans  which,  if  you  will  adopt  them,  will  go  some  way  to  close 
up  many  vexed  financial  questions,  which,  if  not  now  settled,  may  be 
attended  with  public  inconvenience,  and  even  with  public  danger,  in 
future  years,  and  under  less  favorable  circumstances ;  that  we  have 
endeavored,  in  the  plans  we  have  now  submitted  to  you,  to  make  the 
path  of  our  successors  in  future  years  not  more  arduous,  but  more 
easy ;  and  I  may  be  permitted  to  add  that,  while  we  have  sought  to 
do  justice  to  the  great  labor  community  of  England,  by  furthering 
their  relief  from  indirect, taxation,  we  have  not  been  guided  1-y  any 
desire  to  put  one  class  against  another.  We  have  felt  we  should  best 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  165 

maintain  our  own  honor,  that  we  should  best  meet  the  views  of  Par- 
liament, and  best  promote  the  interests  of  the  country,  by  declining1 
to  draw  any  invidious  distinction  between  class  and  class,  by  adapting 
it  to  ourselves  as  a  sacred  aim  to  diffuse  and  distribute  the  burdens 
with  equal  and  impartial  hand ;  and  we  have  the  consolation  of 
believing  that  by  proposals  such  as  these,  we  contribute  as  far  as  jn 
us  lies,  not  only  to  develop  the  material  resources  of  the  country, 
but  to  knit  the  various  parts  of  this  great  nation  yet  more  closely  to 
than  ever,  to  that  Throne  and  to  those  institutions  under  which  it  is 
our  happiness  to  live." 

During  Mr.  Gladstone's  first  tenure  of  office  as  Chancel- 
lor of  the  Exchequer,  a  curious  adventure  occurred  to  him 
in  the  London  offices  of  the  late  Mr.  W  Lindsay,  merchant, 
shipowner,  and  M.  P.  There  one  day  entered  a  brusque 
and  wealthy  shipowner  of  Sunderland,  inquiring  for  Mr. 
Lindsay.  As  Mr.  Lindsay  was  out,  the  visitor  was  requested 
to  wait  in  an  adjacent  room,  where  he  found  a  person  busily 
engaged  in  copying  some  figures.  The  Sunderland  ship- 
owner paced  the  room  several  times,  and  took  careful  note 
of  the  writer's  doings,  and  at  length  said  to  him,  "Thou 
writes  a  bonny  hand,  thou  dost. " 

"I  am  glad  you  think  so,"  was  the  reply. 

' '  Ah,  thou  dost.  Thou  makes  thy  figures  weel.  Thou'rt 
just  the  chap  I  want."1 

"Indeed  !"  said  the  Londoner, 

"Yes,  indeed,"  said  the  Sunderland  man.  "I'm  a  man 
of  few  words.  Noo,  if  thou'lt  come  over  to  canny  ould 
Sunderland,  thou  seest  I'll  give  thee  a  hundred  and  twenty 
pounds  a  year,  and  that's  a  plum  thou  dost  not  meet  with 
every  day  in  thy  life,  I  reckon.  Noo  then." 

The  Londoner  replied  that  he  was  much  obliged  for  the 
offer,  and  would  wait  till  Mr.  Lindsay  returned,  whom  he 
would  consult  upon  the  subject.  Accordingly,  on  the  return 
of  the  latter,  he  was  informed  of  the  shipowner's  tempting 
offer. 

"  Very  well, "  said  Mr.  Lindsay,  "I  should  be  sorry  to 
stand  in  your  way.  One  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  is  more 


1C6  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

than  I  can  afford  to  pay  you  in  the  department  in  which  you 
are  at  present  placed.  You  will  find  iny  friend  a  good  and 
kind  master,  and,  under  the  circumstances,  the  sooner  you 
know  each  other  the  better.  Allow  me,  therefore,  Mr. 

— ,  to  introduce  you  to  the  Right  Hon.  W.  E.  Gladstone, 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. " 

The  Sunderland  shipowner  wished  himself  back  in 
Sunderland. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  at  any  great  length  into  the 
story  of  the  Crimean  War.  The  Greek  and  Latin  churches 
— Russia  championing  one  and  France  the  other — had 
quarreled  of  the  custody  of  the  Holy  Places  of  Jerusalem, 
and  out  of  this  dispute  arose  a  claim  on  the  part  of  Russia 
to  a  protectorate  over  all  the  Greek  subjects  of  the  Sultan 
— a  claim  which  the  Sultan  of  course  resisted.  Great  Britain 
took  the  field  on  the  side  of  Turkey.  It  has  been  said  again 
and  again  that  England  "drifted"  into  this  war.  Be  this  as 
it  may,  it  is  very  certain  that  Mr.  Gladstone  took  his  full 
share  of  the  responsibility  of  this  very  serious  step.  Long 
years  afterwards,  when  quite  willing  to  admit  that  the 
Crimean  War  was  a  great  blunder,  he  nevertheless  accepted 
his  full  share  of  blame.  Speaking  of  the  war  shortly  after 
its  conclusion  he  said :  "It  was  at  its  commencement,  not 
only  a  just  and  necessary  war,  but  it  could  not  have  been 
avoided.  It  was  absolutely  necessary  to  cut  the  meshes  of 
the  net  in  which  Russia  had  entangled  Turkey.  It  was  a 
war  carried  on  by  a  united  people  in  the  name  and  on  the 
behalf  of  Europe,  backed  by  a  European  combination  and 
by  the  authority  of  European  law." 

The  charge  made  frequently  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  "a 
blind  supporter  either  of  Ottoman  rule  or  of  the  integ- 
rity of  the  Ottoman  Empire  as  such,"  can  hardly  be  sus- 
tained. He  expressly  stated  that  the  government  was  not 
engaged  in  maintaining  the  independence  and  integrity  of 
the  Ottoman  Empire,  as  those  words  might  be  used  with 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  167 

reference  to  the  integrity  and  independence  of  England  or 
of  France.  He  further  referred  to  the  anomalies  of  the 
Eastern  Empire,  the  political  solecism  of  a  Mussulman  faith 
exercising  a  dominion  over  twelve  millions  of  our  fellow- 
creatures,  the  weakness  inherent  in  the  nature  of  the 
Turkish  Government,  and  the  eventualities  that  surrounded 
the.  future  of  that  dubious  empire,  though  he  added  that 
these  were  not  the  things  with  which  any  British  Govern- 
ment had  then  to  deal.  This  much  will,  therefore,  be  al- 
lowed, that  Mr.  Gladstone  admitted  and  deplored  the  cor- 
ruptions of  the  Turkish  Government,  and  the  anomalous 
relations  existing  between  the  Porte  and  its  Christian  sub- 
jects. 

The  members  of  the  Peace  Society  strongly  condemned 
the  Aberdeen  ministry  for  the  course  upon  which  it  now 
entered.  A  deputation  went  to  St.  Petersburg  to  inter- 
view the  Emperor  Nicholas,  but  all  in  vain.  Lord  Aber- 
deen and  Mr.  Gladstone  were  both  opposed  to  war  in  the 
abstract.  On  humanitarian  as  well  as  on  national  grounds 
Mr.  Gladstone  was  bitterly  opposed  to  war.  He  was  al- 
most ready  to  accept  John  Bright's  comprehensive  dictum  : 
"War  is  always  a  blunder  and  always  a  crime."  We  have 
referred  to  the  phrase  about  England  "drifting"  into  the 
war,  it  might  rather  be  said  that  the  war  spirit  was 
over  all  the  land  and  that  the  government  was  "driven"  to 
take  a  part  in  the  conflict.  The  Emperor  Napoleon  made  a 
final  effort  to  preserve  peace  but  his  appeal  was  treated 
with  disdain.  The  Czar  was  obstinate.  A  telegraphic  dis- 
patch was  received  in  Paris  from  the  French  representative 
at  St.  Petersburg  consisting  of  this  brief  but  insulting  mes- 
sage in  answer  to  Napoleon's  note  :  "I  return  with  re- 
fusal." This  settled  the  whole  question.  War  was  inevi- 
table and  henceforth  the  French  became  the  warm  and 
enthusiastic  allies  of  England. 


168  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  attitude  is  impressively  described  by  Mr. 
Kinslake,  the  brilliant  historian  of  the  Crimean  war,  in  the 

55  '  ' 

following  words: 

"  If  he  was  famous  for  the  splendor  of  his  eloquence,  for 
his  unaffected  piety,  and  for  his  blameless  life,  he  was  cele- 
brated far  and  wide  for  a  more  than  common  liveliness  of 
conscience.  He  had  once  imagined  it  to  be  his  duty  to  quit 
a  government,  and  to  burst  through  strong  ties  of  friend- 
ship and  gratitude,  by  reason  of  a  thin  shade  of  difference 
on  the  subject  of  white  or  brown  sugar.  It  was  believed 
that,  if  he  were  to  commit  even  a  little  sin,  or  to  enter- 
tain an  evil  thought,  he  would  instantly  arraign  himself 
before  the  dread  tribunal  which  awaited  him  within  his  own 
bosom;  and  that,  his  intellect  being  subtle  and  microscopic, 
and  delighting  in  casuistry  and  exaggeration,  he  would  be 
likely  to  give  his  soul  a  very  harsh  trial,  and  treat  himself 
as  a  great  criminal  for  faults  too  minute  to  be  visible  to  the 
naked  eyes  of  laymen.  His  friends  lived  in  dread  of  his 
virtues  as  tending  to  make  him  whimsical  and  unstable,  and 
the  practical  politicians,  perceiving  that  he  was  not  to  be 
depended  upon  for  party  purposes,  and  was  bent  upon  none 
but  lofty  objects,  used  to  look  upon  him  as  dangerous — 
used  to  call  him  behind  his  back  a  good  man — a  good  man 
in  the  worst  sense  of  the  term." 

In  pleading  that  those  who  made  war  should  be  prepared 
to  make  the  sacrifices  needful  to  carry  it  out,  and  trusting 
that  the  day  of  honorable  peace  might  not  be  far  away,  Mr. 
Gladstone  said: 

"  We  have  entered  upon  a  great  struggle,  but  we  have  en- 
tered upon  it  under  favorable  circumstances.  We  have  pro- 
posed to  you  to  make  great  efforts,  and  you  have  nobly  and 
cheerfully  backed  our  proposals.  You  have  already  by 
your  votes  added  nearly  40,000  men  to  the  establishments 
of  the  country;  and,  taking  into  account  changes  that  have 
actually  been  carried  into  effect  with  regard  to  the  return 


MEMBER   FOR   OXFORD.  169 

of  soldiers  from  the  Colonies,  and  the  arrangements  which 
in  the  present  state  of  Ireland  might  be  made — but  which 
are  not  made — with  respect  to  the  constabulary  force,  in 
order  to  render  the  military  force  disposable  to  the  utmost 
possible  extent.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  we  have  vir- 
tually an  addition  to  the  disposable  forces  of  the  country, 
by  land  and  by  sea,  at  the  present  moment,  as  compared 
with  our  position  twelve  months  ago,  to  the  extent  of  nearly 
50,000  men.  This  looks  like  an  intention  to  carry  on  your 
war  with  vigor,  and  the  wish  and  hope  of  her  Majesty's 
Government  is,  that  that  may  be  truly  said  of  the  people  of 
England,  with  regard  to  this  war  which  was,  I  am  afraid, 
not  so  truly  said  of  Charles  II  by  a  courtly  but  great  poet, 
Dryden — 

1  He  without  fear,  a  dangerous  war  pursues, 
Which  without  rashness  he  began  before.' 

That,  we  trust,  will  be  the  motto  of  the  people  of  England; 
and  you  have  this  advantage,  that  the  sentiment  of  Europe, 
and  we  trust  the  might  of  Europe,  is  with  you.  These  cir- 
cumstances— though  we  must  not  be  sanguine,  though  it 
would  be  the  wildest  presumption  for  any  man  to  say,  when 
the  ravages  of  European  war  had  once  begun,  where  and  at 
what  point  it  would  be  stayed — these  circumstances  justify 
us  in  cherishing  the  hope  that  possibly  this  may  not  be  a 
long  war." 

The  history  of  the  war  was  as  sad  a  chapter  as  ever  was 
written.  After  a  dreadful  winter  passed  in  the  Crimea,  in 
which  24,000  British  soldiers  were  sacrificed — largely  the 
result  of  mismanagement  of  the  War  Department  in  London, 
the  whole  country  was  roused  to  the  deepest  sorrow  and  ex- 
citement. Mr.  Gladstone  described  the  matter  to  be  one 
for  "weeping  all  day  and  praying  all  night." 

On  January  26,  1855,  Mr.  Roebuck  moved  for  a  select 
committee  * '  to  inquire  into  the  condition  of  our  army  be- 
fore Sebastopol,  and  into  the  conduct  of  those  departments 


170  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

of  the  government  whose  duty  it  has  been  to  minister  to 
the  wants  of  that  army. " 

Mr.  Roebuck's  motion  was  carried,  with  an  overwhelm- 
ing majority. 

For  Mr.  Roebuck's  committee,  305. 

For  ministers,  148 

Majority  against  ministers,  157. 

Thus  fell  the  famous  coalition  cabinet  of  Lord  Aberdeen. 

The  Queen  sent  for  Lord  Derby,  but  Mr.  Gladstone  and 
the  Peelites  refused  to  join  him,  and  he  failed  to  form  a 
ministry.  Lord  Palmerston  formed  a  cabinet,  in  which 
Mr.  Gladstone  served  as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. 
Within  three  weeks  Mr.  Gladstone  and  his  Peelite  colleagues 
left  the  government,  Lord  Palmerston  having  consented  to 
the  appointment  of  the  committee  asked  for  by  Mr.  Roe- 
buck. 

Mr.  Gladstone  now  became  a  free  lance.  On  a  bye  ques- 
tion which  he  had  taken — the  behavior  of  British  authori- 
ties toward  the  Chinese  in  the  matter  of  the  Lorcha  Arrow — 
he  succeeded  in  defeating  the  government.  They  were  left 
in  a  minority  of  sixteen,  and  on  the  21st  of  March  Parlia- 
ment was  dissolved.  The  general  election  which  followed 
gave  Lord  Palmerston  a  substantial  working  majority. 

'  In  this  Parliament  Mr.  Gladstone  took  strong  ground  in 
opposition  to  the  divorce  bill  which  the  government  was 
supporting. 

"  Marriage,"  he  declared,  was  a  "  mystery"  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion.  "  Our  Lord  had  emphatically  told  us  that  at 
and  from  the  beginning  marriage  was  perpetual  and  was  on 
both  sides  single."  Christian  marriage,  according  to  Holy 
Scripture,  was  a  life-long  compact  which  may  sometimes  be 
put  in  abeyance  by  the  separation  of  a  couple,  but  which 
can  never  be  rightfully  dissolved  so  as  to  set  them  free  dur- 
ing their  joint  lives  to  unite  with  other  persons.  "  I  could 
not,"  he  said,  "  regard  this  measure  in  any  other  light  ex- 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  171 

cept  one — namely,  as  the  first  instalment  of  change,  the  first 
stage  in  a  road  of  which  we  know  nothing,  except  that  it  is 
different  from  that  of  our  forefathers,  and  that  it  is  a  point 
which  leads  from  the  point  to  which  Christianity  has 
brought  us  and  carries  us  back  toward  the  state  in  which 
Christianity  found  the  heathenism  of  man." 

The  divorce  bill  was,  nevertheless,  carried  into  law. 

Mr.  Roebuck's  Sebastapol  Committee  presented  its  report 
on  the  16th  of  June.  The  report  was  voluminous  and 
exhaustive,  every  detail  of  the  evidence  given  before 
the  committee  was  carefully  reviewed.  The  report  ended 
thus  : 

' '  Your  committee  report  that  the  sufferings  of  the  army 
resulted  mainly  from  the  circumstances  under  which  the  ex_ 
pedition  to  the  Crimea  was  undertaken  and  executed.  The 
administration  which  ordered  that  expedition  had  no  adequate 
information  as  to  the  amount  of  forces  in  the  Crimea.  They 
were  not  acquainted  with  the  strength  of  the  fortresses  to  be 
attacked,  or  with  the  resources  of  the  country  to  be  invaded. 
They  hoped  and  expected  the  expedition  to  be  immediately 
successful,  and  as  they  did  not  foresee  the  probability  of  a 
protracted  struggle,  they  made  no  provision  for  a  winter 
campaign.  The  patience  and  fortitude  of  the  army  demand 
the  admiration  and  gratitude  of  the  nation  on  whose  behalf 
they  have  fought,  bled  and  suffered.  Their  heroic  valor 
and  equally  heroic  patience  under  sufferings  and  privations 
have  given  them  claims  on  the  country  which  will  doubtless 
be  gratefully  acknowledged.  Your  committee  will  now 
close  their  report  with  a  hope  that  every  British  army  may 
in  future  display  the  valor  which  this  noble  army  has  dis- 
played, and  that  none  may  hereafter  be  exposed  to  such  suf- 
ferings as  have  been  recorded  in  these  pages." 

AVhen  at  last  the  power  of  Russia  was  broken,  alike  on 
the  Baltic  and  the  Black  Sea,  the  Emperor  gave  up  the 
struggle.  Negotiations  for  peace  were  entered  upon.  A 


172  LIFE    OF   GLADSTONE. 

treaty  of  peace  was*  subsequently  concluded  at  Paris  in 
March,  1856. 

In  the  debate  on  the  celebrated  Conspiracy  Bill,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone made  one  of  his  remarkable  speeches,  the  peroration 
of  which  we  quote  : 

' '  If  there  is  any  feeling  in  this  House  for  the  honor  of 
England,  don't  let  us  be  led  away  by  some  vague  statement 
about  the  necessity  of  reforming  the  criminal  law.  Let  us 
insist  upon  the  necessity  of  vindicating  that  law.  As  far  as 
justice  requires,  let  us  have  the  existing  law  vindicated,  and 
then  let  us  proceed  to  amend  it  if  it  be  found  necessary. 
But  do  not  let  us  allow  it  to  lie  under  a  cloud  of  accusations 
of  which  we  are  convinced  that  it  is  totally  innocent.  These 
times  are  grave  for  liberty.  We  live  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury ;  we  talk  of  progress  ;  we  .believe  that  we  are  advancing; 
but  can  any  man  of  observation  who  has  watched  the  events 
of  the  last  few  years  in  Europe  have  failed  to  perceive  that 
there  is  a  movement  indeed,  but  a  downward  and  backward 
movement  ?  There  are  a  few  spots  in  which  institutions 
that  claim  our  sympathy  still  exist  and  flourish.  They  are 
secondary  places — nay,  they  are  almost  the  holes  and  cor- 
ners of  Europe,  so  far  as  mere  material  greatness  is  con- 
cerned, although  their  moral  greatness  will,  I  trust,  insure 
them  long  prosperity  and  happiness.  But  in  these  times 
more  than  ever,  does  responsibility  center  upon  the  institu- 
tions of  England  ;  and  if  it  does  center  upon  England,  upon 
her  principles,  upon  her  laws,  and  upon  her  governors,  then 
I  say,  that  measure  passed  by  this  House  of  Commons — the 
chief  hope  of  freedom — which  attempts  to  establish  a  moral 
complicity  between  us  and  those  who  seek  safety  in  repress- 
ive measures,  will  be  a  blow  and  a  discouragement  to  that 
sacred  cause  in  every  country  in  the  world." 

In  1858,  the  natives  of  the  Ionian  Islands — a  republic 
under  the  protection  of  Great  Britain,  were  in  a  very  agi- 
tated state,  being  anxious  to  be  annexed  by  Greece.  To 


MEMBER    FOR    OXFORD.  173 

this  England  objected,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  was  appointed 
Lord  High  Commissioner  Extraordinary  to  the  Ionian 
Islands.  He  arrived  at  Corfu  with  the  object  of  doing  his 
best  to  reconcile  the  inhabitants  to  the  British  protectorate. 
He  was  known  to  be  a  Greek  student;  and  we  learn  that 
the  population  of  the  Islands  persisted  in  regarding  him  not 
as  the  Commissioner  of  a  Conservative  English  Government, 
but  as  ''Gladstone  the  Phil-Hellene!"  He  was  received 
wherever  he  went  with  the  honors  due  to  a  liberator.  His 
path  everywhere  was  made  to  seem  like  a  triumphal  prog- 
ress. In  vain  he  repeated  his  assurances  that  he  came  to 
reconcile  the  Islands  to  the  protectorate,  and  not  to  deliver 
them  from  it.  The  popular  instinct  insisted  upon  regard- 
ing him  as,  at  least,  the  precursor  of  their  union  to  the  king- 
dom of  Greece. 

The  legislative  assembly  of  the  Islands  met,  and  presented 
a  petition  to  Gladstone,  proposing  their  annexation  to 
Greece.  Finding  that  this  was  their  firm  wish,  the  Lord 
High  Commissioner  dispatched  home  a  copy  of  the  vote,  in 
which  the  representatives  of  the  Ionian  people,  declared  that 
1  'the  single  and  unanimous  will  of  the  Ionian  people  has 
been  and  is,  for  their  union  with  the  kingdom  of  Greece." 
Mr.  Gladstone  left  the  Islands  in  February,  1859.  The  lon- 
ians  continued  their  agitation,  and  finally,  in  1864,  were 
formally  given  over  to  the  government  of  Greece. 

The  year  1860  saw  the  completion  of  the  Commercial 
Treaty  with  France.  Mr.  Kichard  Cobden,  Napoleon  III 
and  Mr.  Gladstone  were  chiefly  responsible  for  this  wise 
measure  which  brought  France  and  England  into  more 
peaceful  relations.  The  old  hobgoblin  of  a  "  French  inva- 
sion" was  laid  forever  at  rest.  As  John  Bright  said  :  "The 
Commercial  Treaty  had  made  worth  while  for  France  and 
England  to  keep  the  peace.  This  same  year  saw  the  last  of 
the  Paper  Duty,  the  abolition  of  which,  in  1861,  was  a 
natural  sequence  to  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Duty. 


174  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

No  place  would  be  more  suitable  than  this  to  refer  to  the 
lamented  death  of  the  Prince  Consort,  which  took  place  in 
December,  1861.  In  the  following  April  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  invited  to  open  a  new  mechanics'  institute  in  Manches- 
ter. From  the  speech  then  made  and  from  his  ' '  Gleanings 
of  Past  Years"  we  cull  the  following  tribute  to  Prince  Albert: 

' '  Over  the  tomb  of  such  a  man  many  tears  might  fall, 
but  not  one  could  be  a  tear  of  bitterness.  These  examples 
of  rare  intelligences,  yet  more  rarely  cultivated,  with  their 
great  duties  greatly  done,  are  not  lights  kindled  for  a 
moment,  in  order  then  to  be  quenched  in  the  blackness  of 
darkness.  While  they  pass  elsewhere  to  attain  their  con- 
summation, they  live  on  here  in  their  good  deeds,  and  their 
venerated  memories  in  their  fruitful  example.  As  even  a 
fine  figure  may  be  eclipsed  by  a  gorgeous  costume,  so  dur- 
ing life  the  splendid  accompaniments  of  a  Prince  Consort's 
position  may  for  the  common  eye  throw  the  qualities  of  his 
mind  and  character,  his  true  humanity,  into  the  shade. 
These  hindrances  to  effectual  perception  are  now  removed  ; 
and  we  can  see,  like  the  forms  of  a  Greek  statue,  severely 
pure  in  their  bath  of  southern  light,  all  his  extraordinary 
gifts  and  virtues  ;  his  manly  force  tempered  with  gentle- 
ness, playfulness  and  love ;  his  intense  devotion  to  duty  ;  his 
pursuit  of  the  practical,  with  an  unfailing  thought  of  the 
ideal ;  his  combined  allegiance  to  beauty  and  to  truth  ;  the 
elevation  of  his  aims,  with  his  painstaking  care  and  thrift 
of  time,  and  methodizing  of  life,  so  as  to  waste  no  particle 
of  his  appliances  and  powers.  His  exact  place  in  the  hier- 
archy of  bygone  excellence  it  is  not  for  us  to  determine  ; 
but  none  can  doubt  that  it  is  a  privilege  which,  in  the  revo- 
lution of  years,  but  rarely  returns,  to  find  such  graces  and 
such  gifts  of  mind,  heart,  character  and  person,  united  in 
one  and  the  same  individual,  and  set  so  steadily  and  firmly 
upon  a  pedestal  of  such  giddy  height,  for  the  instruction 
and  admiration  of  mankind. 


MEMBER  FOR  OXFORD.  175 

"His  comprehensive  gaze  ranged  to  and  fro  between 
the  base  and  the  summit  of  society,  and  examined  the 
interior  forces  by  which  it  is  kept  at  once  in  balance  and  in 
motion.  In  his  well-ordered  life  there  seemed  to  be  room 
for  all  things — for  every  manly  exercise,  for  the  study  and 
practice  of  art,  for  the  exacting  cares  of  a  splendid  court, 
for  minute  attention  to  every  domestic  and  paternal  duty, 
for  advice  and  aid  toward  the  discharge  of  public  business 
in  its  innumerable  forms,  and  for  meeting  the  voluntary 
calls  of  an  active  philanthropy  ;  one  day  in  considering  the 
best  form  for  the  dwellings  of  the  people  ;  another  day  in 
bringing  his  just  and  gentle  influence  to  bear  on  the  relations 
of  master  and  domestic  servant;  another  in  suggesting  and 
supplying  the  means  of  culture  for  the  most  numerous 
classes  ;  another  in  some  good  work  of  almsgiving  or  relig- 
ion. Nor  was  it  a  merely  external  activity  which  he  dis- 
played. His  mind,  it  is  evident,  was  too  deeply  earnest  to 
be  satisfied  in  anything,  smaller  or  greater,  with  resting  on 
the  surface.  With  a  strong  grasp  on  practical  life  in  all  its 
forms,  he  united  a  habit  of  thought  eminently  philosophic, 
ever  referring  facts  to  their  causes,  and  pursuing  action  to 
its  consequences.  Gone  though  he  be  from  among  us,  he, 
like  other  worthies  of  mankind  who  have  preceded  him,  is 
not  altogether  gone  ;  for,  in  the  words  of  the  poet — 

Your  heads  must  come 

To  the  cold  tomb. 

Only  the  actions  of  the  just 

Smell  sweet  and  blossom  in  the  dust. 

"  So  he  has  left  all  men,  in  all  classes,  many  a  useful 
lesson,  to  be  learned  from  the  record  of  his  life  and  char- 
acter. 

1 '  Perhaps  no  sharper  stroke  ever  cut  human  lives  asunder 
than  that  which  parted,  so  far  as  this  world  of  sense  is  con- 
cerned, the  lives  of  the  Queen  of  England  and  of  her  chosen 
Consort.  It  had  been  obvious  to  us  all,  though  necessarily 


176  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

» 

in  different  degrees,  that  they  were  blessed  with  the  posses- 
sion of  the  secret  of  reconciling  the  discharge  of  incessant 
and  wearing  public  duty  with  the  cultivation  of  the  inner  and 
domestic  life.  The  attachment  that  binds  together  wife  and 
husband  was  known  to  be,  in  their  case,  and  to  have  been  from 
the  first,  of  an  unusual  force.  Through  more  than  twenty 
years,  which  flowed  past  like  one  long  unclouded  summer  day, 
that  attachment  was  cherished,  exercised  and  strengthened, 
by  all  the  forms  of  family  interest,  by  all  the  associated 
pursuits  of  highly  cultivated  minds,  by  all  the  cares  and 
responsibilities  which  surround  the  throne,  and  which  the 
Prince  was  called,  in  his  own  sphere,  both  to  alleviate  and 
to  share.  On  the  6ne  side,  such  love  is  rare,  even  in  the 
annals  of  the  love  of  woman  ;  on  the  other,  such  service 
can  hardly  find  a  parallel,  for  it  is  hard  to  know  how  a 
husband  could  render  it  to  a  wife,  unless  that  wife  were 
also  Queen." 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

REJECTED  BY  OXFORD — LIBERAL  LEADER. 

"Henceforth  Mr.  Gladstone  will  belong  to  the  country,  and  no 
longer  to  the  University/' 

—Times,  July  19,   1865. 

"Oxford,  I  think,  will  learn  to  regret  her  wide  severance  from 
one  so  loyal  to  the  church,  and  to  the  faith,  and  to  God." 

— Dr  Pusey. 

Once  the  ties  had  been  broken  which  bound  him  to  his  alma 
mater,  and  Mr.  Gladstone  felt  like  a  man  who  breathes  the  fresh 
mountain  air,  after  a  close  confinement  in  a  crowded  city. 

— L.  Burnett  Smith. 

The  rejection  of  Mr.  Gladstone  by  Oxford,  after  eighteen 
years  of  sincere  and  faithful  service,  forms  an  important 
and  almost  romantic  episode  in  the  career  of  the  great 
statesman.  In  the  minds  of  many  —  the  wish  being  father 
to  the  thought — the  rejection  was  a  foregone  conclusion. 
For  a  long  time  any  word  or  action  that  could  be  construed 
into  a  point,  however  feeble  and  remote,  that  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  fostering  Liberal  opinions,  and  that  his  face  was 
turning  toward  the  Liberal  camp,  had  been  eagerly 
seized  upon  by  members  of  the  Conservative  party.  In  the 
House  of  Commons  at  the  close  of  March  1865,  Mr.  Dill- 
wyn  proposed  "That  the  present  position  of  the  Irish 
church  establishment  is  unsatisfactory,  and  calls  for  the 
early  attention  of  her  Majesty's  government." 

Mr.  Gladstone  in  response  arose  and  said  '  'That  although 
the  government  were  unable  to  agree  to  the  resolution,  they 
were  not  prepared  to  deny  the  abstract  truth  of  the  former 
part  of  it."  These  words  were  seized  upon  as  practically 

conceding  the  whole  question  involved  in   Mr.    Dillwyn's 

irr 


178  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

motion.  Some  months  later  Mr.  Gladstone  explained  to 
Dr.  Hannah,  warden  of  Trinity  College,  Glenalmond,  his 
reasons  for  not  dealing  at  that  time  with  the  Irish  Church. 
The  reasons  were  thus  expressed: 

"First,  because  the  question  is  remote  and  apparently 
out  of  all  bearing  on  the  practical  politics  of  the  day,  I 
think  it  would  be  for  me  worse  than  superfluous  to  deter- 
mine upon  any  scheme,  or  basis  of  a  scheme,  with  respect  to 
it.  Secondly,  because  it  is  difficult;  even  if  I  anticipated 
any  likelihood  of  being  called  upon  to  deal  with  it,  I  should 
think  it  right  to  take  no  decision  beforehand  on  the  mode  of 
dealing  with  the  difficulties.  But  the  first  reason  is  that 
which  chiefly  weighs.  .  .  I  think  I  have  stated  strongly 
my  sense  of  the  responsibility  attaching  to  the  opening  of 
such  a  question,  except  in  a  state  of  things  which  gave 
promise  of  satisfactorily  closing  it.  For  this  reason  it  is 
that  I  have  been  so  silent  about  the  matter,  and  may  probably 
be  so  again;  but  I  could  not,  as  a  Minister  and  as  member 
for  Oxford  University,  allow  it  to  be  debated  an  indefinite 
number  of  times,  and  remain  silent.  One  thing,  however,  I 
may  add,  because  I  think  it  a  clear  landmark. — In  any 
measure  dealing  with  the  Irish  church,  I  think  (though  I 
scarcely  expect  ever  to  be  called  on  to  share  in  such  a  meas- 
ure) the  Act  of  Union  must  be  recognized,  and  must  have 
important  consequences,  especially  with  reference  to  the 
position  of  the  hierarchy. " 

The  sagacious  and  suspicious  Oxford  Dons  could  see  in 
this  guarded  statement,  the  straw  that  indicated  the  direction 
of  the  current. 

On  the  sixth  of  July,  1865,  Parliament  was  prorogued 
with  a  view  of  immediate  dissolution.  This  parliament  died  a 
natural  death.  The  one  interesting  event  towards  which  all 
eyes  was  turning,  was  the  fate  of  Mr.  Gladstone  as  candi- 
date for  the  University  of  Oxford.  That  his  seat  was  in 
peril  had  long  been  known.  When  the  time  for  nomination 


REJECTED    BY    OXFORD — LIBERAL    LEADER.  179 

came,  Mr.  Gathorne  Hardy,  a  pronounced  Conservative,  was 
placed  in  opposition  to  Mr.  Gladstone.  On  the  thirteenth 
of  July,  the  nomination  took  place,  being  conducted  as  was 
the  custom  in  Latin.  Dr.  Liddall  proposed  Mr.  Gladstone; 
the  warden  of  All  Soul's  proposed  Sir  William  Heathcote; 
and  the  Public  Orator  proposed  Mr.  Gathorne  Hardy. 
A  period  of  five  days  was  allowed  for  keeping  open  the 
polls.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  in  a  minority  from  the  begin- 
ning. His  votes  fell  six  below  Mr.  Hardy  on  the  first  day. 
On  the  third  day  his  minority  increased  to  seventy-four  and 
on  the  fourth  to  230.  Every  effort  was  made  by  his  friends, 
but  all  in  vain.  The  Tory  parsons  had  made  up  their  minds 
to  defeat  him.  Sir  J.  T.  Coleridge,  chairman  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's committee  sent  out  the  following  note: 

"The  committee  do  not  scruple  to  advocate  his  cause  on 
grounds  above  the  common  level  of  politics.  They  claim  for 
him  the  gratitude  due  to  one  whose  public  life  has  for  eight- 
een years  reflected  a  lustre  on  the  University  herself.  They 
confidently  invite  you  to  consider  whether  his  pure  and 
exalted  character,  his  splendid  abilities,  and  his  eminent 
services  to  church  and  state,  do  not  constitute  the  highest  of 
all  qualifications  for  an  academical  seat,  and  entitle  him  to 
be  judged  by  his  constituents,  as  he  will  assuredly  be  judged 
by  posterity." 

Mr.    Gladstone's  minority  was  reduced    somewhat,   but 
the  state  of  the  poll  was  finally  declared  as  follows  : 
Sir  William  Heathcote,  3,236 

Mr.  Gathorne  Hardy,  -     1,904 

Mr.  W.  E.  Gladstone,  -  1,724 

Majority  for  Mr.  Hardy  over  Mr.  Gladstone  180. 
Mr.  Gladstone's  defeat  was  due  to  non-residents,  yet 
amongst  the  distinguished  voters  who  supported  him  were 
the  following :  The  Bishops  of  Durham,  Oxford  and 
Chester,  Earl  Cowper,  the  Dean  of  Westminster,  the  Dean 
of  Christ  church,  Professors  Farrar,  Rolleston,  and  ?J::r: 


180  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Muller,  the  Dean  of  Lichfield,  Sir  J.  T.  Coleridge,  Sir  Henry 
Thompson,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Jelf,  the  Bodleian  Librarian,  Sir 
F.  T.  Palgrave,  the  Right  Hon.  S.  Lushington,  the  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's,  the  Rev.  John  Keble,  the  Principal  of  Brasenose, 
the  Dean  of  Peterborough,  Prof.  Conington,  the  Rev.  J.  B. 
Mozley,  Mr.  E.  A.  Freeman,  Chief  Justice  Erie,  Dr.  Pusey, 
Prof.  Jowett,  Mr.  Cardwell,  the  Marquis  of  Kildare,  and 
the  Rector  of  Lincoln. 

The  whole  Liberal  party  of  England  had  looked  forward 
with  ardent  hope  and  desire  to  the  defeat  of  Mr.  Gladstone 
at  Oxford.  If  Oxford  cast  out  her  honored  son  it  would 
give  the  Liberal  party  an  irresistible  leader.  The  election 
in  South  Lancashire  was  just  pending.  At  the  nomination 
on  the  17th,  Mr.  Gladstone  was  proposed  as  a  candidate,  in 
view  and  hope  of  the  almost  certain  defeat  at  Oxford.  The 
die  was  cast.  Mr.  Gladstone  hastened  to  Manchester  and 
met  the  Liberal  election  committee,  and  at  once  issued  the 
following  brief  address  to  the  electors  of  South  Lancashire  : 

"To  the  electors  of  South  Lancashire  :  Gentlemen — I 
appear  before  you  as  a  candidate  for  the  suffrages  of  your 
divisibn  of  my  native  county.  Time  forbids  me  to  enlarge 
on  the  numerous  topics  which  justly  engage  the  public  in- 
terest. I  will  bring  them  all  to  a  single  head.  You  are 
conversant — few  so  much  so — with  the  legislation  of  the  last 
thirty-five  years.  You  have  seen,  you  have  felt  its  results. 
You  cannot  fail  to  have  observed  the  vordict  which  the 
country  generally  has,  within  the  last  eight  days,  pronounced 
upon  the  relative  claims  and  positions  of  the  two  great  po- 
litical parties  with  respect  to  that  legislation  in  the  past, 
and  to  the  prospective  administration  of  public  affairs.  I 
humbly,  but  confidently,  without  the  least  disparagement 
to  many  excellent  persons,  from  whom  I  have  the  misfortune 
frequently  to  differ,  ask  you  to  give  your  powerful  voice  in 
confirmation  of  that  verdict,  and  to  pronounce  with  signifi- 
cance as  to  the  direction  in  which  you  desire  the  wheels  of 


REJECTED    BY    OXFORD — LIBERAL   LEADER.  181 

the  State  to  move.  Before  these  words  can  be  read,  I 
hope  to  be  among  you  in  the  hives  of  your  teeming 
enterprise. " 

At  the  close  of  the  poll  at  Oxford,  on  the  18th  of  July, 
1865,  which  recorded  Mr.  Harding's  triumph  and  Mr. 
Gladstone's  defeat,  Mr.  Gladstone  wrote  the  following 
impressive  valedictory  to  the  members  of  the  convocation  : 

"  After  an  arduous  connection  of  eighteen  years,  I  bid 
you  respectfully  farewell.  My  earnest  purpose  to  serve 
you,  my  many  faults  and  shortcomings,  the  incidents  of  the 
political  relation  between  the  University  and  myself,  estab- 
lished in  1847,  so  often  questioned  in  vain,  and  now  at 
length,  finally  dissolved,  I  leave  to  the  judgment  of  the 
future.  It  is  one  imperative  duty,  and  one  alone,  which 
induces  me  to  trouble  you  with  these  few  parting  words — 
the  duty  of  expressing  my  profound  and  lasting  gratitude 
for  indulgences  as  generous  and  for  support  as  warm  and 
enthusiastic  in  itself,  and  as  honorable  from  the  character 
and  distinctions  of  those  who  have  given  it,  as  has,  in  my 
belief,  ever  been  accorded  by  any  constituency  to  any  rep- 
resentative." 

On  this  memorable  18th  of  July,  seven  thousand  men 
were  wedged  into  the  Free  Trade  Hall  in  Manchester,  wait- 
ing to  hear  the  voice  of  the  defeated  of  Oxford.  The  rank 
and  file  of  the  Liberal  party  regarded  this  defeat  as  the  ' '  one 
thing  needful "  to  the  national  triumph  of  the  party  and  its 
principles.  "  Let  Oxford  reject  him,"  they  said,  "  and  he 
will  come  to  us  *  unmuzzled.'  "  The  word  was  passed  from 
lip  to  lip,  till  it  became  "  familiar  as  a  household  word." 

When  Mr.  Gladstone  appeared  upon  the  platform  he  met 
with  an  enthusiastic  welcome,  such  as  has  not  often  been 
accorded  to  the  most  popular  favorite.  After  silence  was 
restored,  he  commenced  that  memorable  speech  in  words 
which  set  that  vast  audience  wild  with  ungovernable 
delight. 


182  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"At  last,  my  friends,"  he  said,  "  I  am  come  among  you, 
and  I  am  come  among  you — to  use  an  expression  which  has 
become  very  famous,  and  is  not  likely  to  be  forgotten — I 
am  come  among  you  'unmuzzled."  At  that  word  "un- 
muzzled "  cheer  rose  on  cheer  ;  then  silence  for  a  breathing 
space,  and  then  cheers,  longer  and  louder  and  more  intense. 
At  last  the  cheers  ceased  from  sheer  exhaustion,  upon 
x which  Mr.  Gladstone  proceeded  : 

"After  an  anxious  struggle  of  eighteen  years,    during 
which  the  unbounded  devotion  and  indulgence  of  my  friends 
maintained  me  in  the  arduous  position  of  representative  of 
the  University  of  Oxford,  I  have  been  driven  from  my  seat. 
I  have  loved  the  University  with  a  deep  and  pass- 
ionate love,  and  as  long  as  I  breathe,  that  attachment  will 
continue;  if  my  affection  is  of  the  smallest  advantage  to  that 
great,  that  ancient,  that  noble  institution.     That  advantage, 
such  as  it  is,  and  it  is  most  insignificant,  Oxford  will  pos- 
sess as  long  as  I  live.     But  don't  mistake  the  issue  which 
has  been  raised.     The  University  has  at  length,  after  eight- 
een years  of  self-  denial,  been  drawn  by  what  I  might,  per- 
haps, call  an  overweening  exercise  of  powder,  into  the  vortex 
of  mere  politics.     Well,  you  will  readily  understand  why, 
as  long  as  I  had  a  hope  that  the  zeal  and  kindness  of  my 
friends  might  keep  me  in  my  place,  it  was  impossible  forme 
to  abandon  them.       Could  they  have  returned  me  by  a  ma- 
jority of  one,  painful  as  it  is  to  a  man  of  my  time  of  life, 
and  feeling  the  weight  of  public  cares,  to    be  incessantly 
struggling  for  his  seat,  nothing  could  have  induced  me  to 
quit  that  University  to  which  I  had  so  long  ago  devoted  my 
best  care  and  attachment.     But  by  no  act  of  mine  I  am  free 
to  come  among  you.    And  having  been  thus  set  free,  I  need 
hardly  tell  you  that  it  is  with  joy,  with  thankfulness  and 
enthusiasm,  that  I  now,  at  this  eleventh  hour,  a  candidate 
without  an  address,   make  my  appeal  to  the  heart  and  the 
mind  of  South  Lancashire,  and  ask  you  to  pronounce  upon 


REJECTED    BY    OXFORD LIBERAL    LEADER.  183 

that  appeal.  As  I  have  said,  I  am  aware  of  no  cause  for  the 
votes  which  have  given  a  majority  against  me  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Oxford,  except  the  fact  that  the  strongest  conviction 
that  the  human  mind  can  receive,  that  an  overpowering 
sense  of  the  public  interests,  that  the  practical  teachings  of 
experience,  to  which  from  my  youth,  Oxford  herself  taught 
me  to  lay  open  my  mind — all  these  had  shown  me  the  folly, 
and  I  will  say,  the  madness  of  refusing  to  join  in  the  gener- 
ous sympathies  of  my  countrymen,  by  adopting  what  I  must 
call  an  obstructive  policy. 

"Without  entering  into  details,  without  unrolling  the  long 
record  of  all  the  great  measures  that  have  been  passed — the 
emancipation  of  Roman  Catholics,  the  removal  of  Tests  from 
Dissenters,  the  reformation  of  the  Poor  Law,  the  reforma- 
tion— I  had  almost  said  the  destruction,  but  it  is  the  refor- 
mation— of  the  Tariff;  the  abolition  of  the  Corn  laws;  the 
abolition  of  the  Navigation  laws;  the  conclusion  of  the 
French  treaty;  the  laws  which  have  relieved  Dissenters  from 
stigma  and  almost  ignomy,  and  which  in  doing  so  have  not 
weakened,  but  have  strengthened  the  church  to  which  I 
belong — all  these  great  acts  accomplished  with  the  same,  I 
had  almost  said  sublime,  tranquility  of  the  whole  country  as  ' 
that  with  which  your  own  vast  machinery  performs  its 
appointed  task,  as  it  were  in  perfect  repose — all  these  things 
have  been  done.  You  have  seen  the  acts.  You  have  seen 
the  fruits. 

It  is  natural  to  inquire  who  have  been  the  doers.  In  a 
very  humble  measure  and  yet  according  to  the  degree  and 
capacity  of  the  powers  which  Providence  has  bestowed  upon 
me,  I  have  been  desirous  not  to  obstruct  but  to  promote  and 
assist,  this  beneficient  and  blessed  process.  And  if  I  entered 
Parliament,  as  I  did  enter  Parliament  with  a  warm  and 
anxious  desire  to  maintain  the  institutions  of  my  country,  I 
can  truly  say  that  there  is  no  period  of  my  life  during  which 
my  conscience  is  so  clear  and  renders  me  so  good  an  answer, 


184:  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

as  those  years  in  which  I  have  co-operated  in  the  promotion 
of  Liberal  measures.  *  *  *  Because  they  are  Liberal 
measures;  they  are  true  measures,  and  indicate  the  true 
policy  by  which  the  country  is  made  strong  and  its  institu- 
tions preserved." 

Mr.  Gladstone  then  proceeded  to  Liverpool,  and  in  an  ad- 
dress to  an  immense  audience  in  the  Royal  Amphitheatre  in 
the  evening,  made  the  following  pathetic  reference  to 
his  relations  to  Oxford: — "If  I  am  told  that  it  is  only  by 
embracing  the  narrow  interests  of  a  political  party  that  Ox- 
ford can  discharge  her  duties  to  the  country,  then  gentle- 
men, I  at  once  say,  I  am  with  the  man  for  Oxford.  We 
see  represented  in  that  ancient  institution — represented 
more  nobly,  perhaps,  and  more  conspicuously  than  in  any  other 
place,  at  any  rate  with  more  remarkable  concentration— the 
most  prominent  features  that  relate  to  the  past  of  England. 
I  come  into  South  Lancashire,  and  find  here  around  me  an 
assemblage  of  different  phenomena.  I  find  developments  of 
industry;  I  find  growth  of  enterprise;  I  find  progress  of  so- 
cial philanthropy;  I  find  prevalence  of  toleration,  and  I  find 
an  ardent  desire  for  freedom.  *  *  *  *  I  have  honest- 
ly, I  have  earnestly,  although  I  may  have  feebly,  striven  to 
unite,  in  my  insignificent  person  that  which  is  represented 
by  Oxford  and  that  which  is  represented  by  Lancashire. 
My  desire  is  that  they  shall  know  and  love  one  another.  If 
I  have  clung  to  the  representation  of  the  university  with 
desperate  fondness,  it  was  because  I  would  not  desert  that 
post  in  which  I  seem  to  have  been  placed.  I  have  not 
abandoned  it.  I  have  been  dismissed  from  it,  not  by  academ- 
ical, but  by  political  agencies.  I  don't  complain  of  those,  or 
those  political  influences  by  which  I  have  been  displaced. 
The  free  constitutional  spirit  of  the  country  requires  that 
the  voice  of  the  majority  should  prevail.  I  hope  the  voice 
of  the  majority  will  prevail  in  South  Lancashire.  I  do  not 
for  a  moment  complain  that  it  should  have  prevailed  in  Ox- 


REJECTED   BY    OXFORD— LIBERAL   LEADER.  185 

ford.  But,  gentlemen,  I  come  now  to  ask  you  a  question 
whether,  because  I  have  been  declared  unfit  longer  to  serve  the 
University  on  account  of  my  political  position,  there  is  any- 
thing in  what  I  have  said  and  done,  in  the  arduous  office 
which  I  hold,  which  is  to  unfit  me  for  the  representation  of 
my  native  country  ? 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  comments  on  this  exciting  epi- 
sode, is  to  be  found  in  a  letter  addressed  by  Dr.  Pusey,  the 
sainted  author  of  "The  Christian  Year,"  to  the  Editor  of 
the  Churchman,  a  pronounced  Tory  journal.  The  letter  ran 
thus:  "You  are  naturally  rejoicing  over  the  rejection  of 
Mr.  Gladstone,  which  I  mourn.  Some  of  those  who  con- 
curred in  that  election,  or  who  stood  aloof,  will,  I  fear, 
mourn  hereafter  with  a  double  sorrow,  because  they  were 
the  cause  of  that  rejection.  I,  of  course,  speak  only 
for  myself,  with  whatever  degree  of  anticipation  may  be 
the  privilege  of  years.  Yet,  on  the  very  ground  that 
I  may  very  probably  not  live  to  see  the  issue  of  the  mo- 
mentous future  now  hanging  over  the  Church,  let  me 
through  you,  express  to  those  friends  from  whom  I  have 
been  separated,  who  love  the  Church  in  itself,  and  not  the 
accident  of  Establishment,  my  conviction,  that  we  should  do 
it  to  identify  the  interests  of  the  Church  with  any  political 
party;  that  we  have  questions  before  us,  compared  with 
which  that  of  the  Establishment  (important  as  it  is  in  respect 
to  the  possession  of  our  parish  churches)  is  as  nothing.  The 
grounds  alleged  against  Mr.  Gladstone,  bore  at  the  utmost 
upon  the  Establishment.  The  Establishment  might  perish, 
and  the  Church  but  come  forth  the  purer.  If  the  Church 
were  corrupted,  the  Establishment  would  become  a  curse  in 
proportion  to  its  influence.  As  that  conflict  will  thicken, 
Oxford  I  think  will  learn  to  regret  her  rude  severance  from 
one  so  loyal  to  the  Church,  to  the  faith  and  to  God." 

Mr.  G.  Barnett  Smith  reviews  the  rejection  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone  in   the   following   terse   and   comprehensive  words : 


186  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"While  the  rejection  of  Mr.  Gladstone  by  the  University 
of  Oxfoid,  was  regarded  in  some  quarters  as  a  signal  triumph 
of  Conservative  reaction,  in  other  respects  it  was  felt  that 
the  opposition  offered  to  him  was  a  most  mistaken  stroke  of 
Tory  policy.  Though  he  always  courageously  acted  upon 
his  convictions,  so  long  as  he  retained  his  seat  for  Oxford 
University,  he  must  have  remained  to  some  extent  fettered. 
He  could  not  altogether  shake  off  the  silent  but  deep  and  un- 
mistakable influence  which  such  a  connection  must  necessar- 
ily exercise.  Once  the  ties  had  been  broken,  which  bound 
him  to  his  Alma  Mater,  Mr.  Gladstone  felt  like  a  man 
who  breathes  the  fresh  mountain  air  after  a  close  confine- 
ment in  the  crowded  city.  There  were  now  many  questions 
whose  consideration  he  could  approach  without  the  sense 
of  an  invisible  but  restraining  influence.  By  the  whole  Lib- 
eral party  throughout  the  country,  his  rejection  was  immedi- 
ately regarded  with  feelings  of  exultation — much  as  (for 
some  reasons)  they  had  desired  his  return  for  that  distin- 
guished seat  of  learning  which  he  had  represented  so  long 
and  so  well.  By  a  large  class  of  non-resident  voters,  Mr. 
Gladstone  was  viewed  as  too  clever  to  be  a  safe  man;  and  it 
was  not  anticipated  that  Mr.  Gathorne  Hardy  would  forfeit 
the  confidence  of  this  body,  by  any  eccentricities  of  genius. " 
The  Times  of  July  19th,  1865,  in  dealing  with  the  matter 
said :  ' '  The  enemies  of  the  University  will  make  the  most 
of  her  disgrace.  It  has  hitherto  been  supposed  that  a 
learned  constituency  was  to  some  extent  exempt  from  the 
vulgar  motives  of  party  spirit,  and  capable  of  forming  a 
higher  estimate  of  statesmanship,  than  common  tradesmen  or 
tenant-farmers.  It  will  now  stand  on  record  that  they  have 
deliberately  sacrificed  a  representative  who  combined  the 
very  highest  qualifications,  moral  and  intellectual,  for  an  ac- 
ademical seat,  to  party-spirit,  and  party-spirit  alone.  .  .  . 
Henceforth  Mr.  Gladstone  will  belong  to  the  country,  but 
no  longer  to  the  University.  Those  Oxford  influences  and 


REJECTED    BY    OXFORD LIBERAL    LEADER.  187 

traditions,  which  have  so  deeply  colored  his  views,  and  so 
greatly  interfered  with  his  better  judgment,  must  gradually 
lose  their  hold  on  him." 

The  Daily  JVews,  which  was  then  regarded  as  the  organ 
of  the  most  advanced  liberal  thought,  expressed  itself  thus  : 

'  'Mr.  Gladstone's  career  as  a  statesman,  will  certainly  not 
be  arrested,  nor  Mr.  Gathorne  Hardy's  capacity  be  enlarged 
by  the  number  of  votes  which  Tory  squires  or  Tory  par 
sons  may  inflict  upon  Lord  Derby's  cheerful  and  fluent 
subaltern,  or  withhold  from  Lord  Palmerston's  brilliant  col- 
league. The  late  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  but  the  chief  of  a 
party,  until  admonished  by  one  ostracism,  he  became  finally 
emancipated  by  another.  Then,  as  now,  the  statesman  who 
was  destined  to  give  up  to  mankind  what  was  never  meant 
for  the  barren  service  of  a  party,  could  say  to  the  honest 
bigots  who  rejected  him — 

I  banish  you; 
There  is  a  world  elsewhere. 

' '  Mediocrity  will  not  be  turned  into  genius,  honest  and 
good-natured  insignificance  into  force,  fluency  into  elo- 
quence, if  the  resident  and  non-resident  Toryism  of  the 
University  of  Oxford,  should  prefer  the  safe  and  sound  Mr. 
Hardy  to  the  illustrious  Minister,  whom  all  Europe  envies 
us  ;  whose  name  is  a  household  word  in  every  political 
assembly  in  the  world." 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE  GREAT  WORK  OF  REFORM. 

Then,  as  now,  the  statesman  who  rras  destined  to  give  up  to  man- 
kind what  was  never  meant  for  the  barren  service  of  a  party  could 
say  to  the  honest  bigots  who  rejected  him: 

"I  banish  you: 
There  is  a  world  elsewhere."  , 

— Daily  News,  July  19, 1865. 

Who  is  this  man  whose  words  have  might 

To  lead  you  from  your  rest  or  care, 
Who  speaks  as  if  the  earth  were  right 

To  stop  its  course  and  listen  there? 
He  bids  you  wonder,  weep,  rejoice, 

Saying  "It  is  yourselves,  not  I; 
I  speak  but  with  the  people's  voice, 

I  see  but  with  the  people's  eye  !" 

— Lord  Houyhton. 

The  severing  of  the  political  tie  with  his  university  after 
eighteen  years'  connection  with  it,  may  have  been  in  some 
sense  a  relief,  but  it  was  a  very  severe  blow  to  so  sensitive 
a  man  as  Mr.  Gladstone.  How  keenly  he  felt  the  blow  we 
may  gather  from  the  following  paragraph  of  a  letter  he 
wrote  to  Samuel  Wilberforce,  Lord  Bishop  of  Oxford,  his 
tried  and  trusted  friend: 

"There  have  been  two  deaths  or  transmigrations  of  spirit, 
in  my  political  existence — one,  very  slow,  the  breaking  of 
ties  with  my  original  party;  the  other  very  short  and  sharp, 
the  breaking  of  the  tie  with  Oxford.  There  will  probably 
be  a  third  and  no  more.  'v 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  returned,  for  South  Lancashire,  but 
not  at  the  head  of  the  poll.  There  were  three  members 
returned  for  this  constituency.  Of  the  six  candidates  who 
entered  the  contest  Mr.  Gladstone  came  out  third  on  the 

188 


THE  GREAT  WORK  OF  REFORM.  189 

list.  It  is  worth  remarking,  however,  that  he  had  a  consid- 
erable majority  in  all  large  towns.  There  was  the  strong- 
hold of  the  Liberal  party.  The  general  election  resulted  in 
a  majority  for  the  Liberals,  and  Lord  Palmerston  continued 
in  office.  But  unforeseen  changes  were  at  hand. 

On  the  18th  of  October,  1865,  the  venerable  Lord 
Palmerston,  at  the  age  of  eighty,  passed  away  from  toil  to 
rest.  Mr.  Gladstone  offered  a  eulogy  on  his  late  chief,  of 
which  the  following  is  the  closing  paragraph  : 

"  All  who  knew  Lord  Palmerston  knew  his  genial  temper 
and  the  courage  with  which  he  entered  into  the  debates  of 
the  House  ;  his  incomparable  tact  and  ingenuity — his  com- 
mand of  fence — his  delight,  his  old  English  delight,  in  a 
fair  stand-up  fight.  Yet,  notwithstanding  the  possession  of 
these  powers,  I  must  say  I  think  there  was  no  man  whose 
inclination  and  whose  habit  were  more  fixed,  so  far  as  our 
discussions  were  concerned,  in  avoiding  whatever  tended  to 
exasperate,  and  in  having  recourse  to  those  means  by  which 
animosity  might  be  calmed  down.  He  had  the  power  to 
stir  up  angry  passions,  but  he  chosea  like  the  sea  god  in  the 
JEneid,  rather  to  pacify.  That  which,  in  my  opinion,  dis- 
tinguished Lord  Palmerston's  speaking  from  the  oratory  of 
other  men,  that  which  was  its  most  remarkable  character- 
istic, was  the  degree  in  which  he  said  precisely  that  which 
he  meant  to  express. " 

Lord  John  Russell  was  sent  for  by  the  Queen.  He  reor- 
ganized the  government.  He  had  been  raised  to  the  House 
of  Lords,  and  now  became  Prime  Minister  with  Mr.  Glad- 
stone as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  and  leader  of  the 
House  of  Commons. 

Here  were  new  honors.  Here  was  a  higher  place,  with 
trying  duties  and  enlarged  responsibilities.  Would  Mr. 
Gladstone  prove  equal  to  the  tasks  ?  Many  were  sanguine 
and  hopeful,  but  not  a  few  feared.  Many  years  have  passed 
since  then,  and  surely  few  men  have  been  more  thoroughly 


190  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

tested;  but  the  almost  universal  testimony  of  those  best 
qualified  to  judge  is  that  Mr.  Gladstone  has  proved  the  most 
able  and  successful  leader  of  the  House  of  Commons  Eng- 
land has  ever  known.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  always  an  enthusi- 
ast, and  in  this  new  place  and  to  these  new  tasks  to  which 
he  had  been  so  suddenly  and  so  strangely  called  he  devoted 
himself  with  most  admired  devotion.  Every  detail  of  the 
new  calling  had  his  most  careful  attention.  "Like  Lord 
Palmerston,  he  generally  remained  in  the  House  from  the 
commencement  of  the  sittings  to  the  close  of  them,  however 
late  the  adjournment  might  be.  But  he  did  not,  like  him, 
slumber  during  the  greater  part  of  the  sittings;  on  the  con- 
trary he  listened  attentively  to  every  speaker,  answered 
fully  every  question  put  to  him,  spoke  on  every  subject, 
and  exhibited  a  sensitive  and  conscientious  anxiety  to  dis- 
charge his  functions  as  leader  of  the  House,  which  his  friends 
feared  would  soon  disable  him  from  the  performance  of  the 
responsible  duties  which  belonged  to  him,  and  with  his  fall 
precipitate  that  of  the  Government  of  which  he  was  the 
mainstay. " 

Mr.  Gladstone's  first  great  duty  in  the  new  Parliament 
was  to  introduce  Lord  John  Russell's  reform  bill.  This 
bill  proposed  to  create  an  occupation  franchise  in  counties, 
including  houses  at  $70  rental,  and  reaching  up  to  $250  the 
occupation  rental.  It  was  calculated  that  this  would  add 
171,000  to  the  electoral  list.  It  was  further  proposed  to 
introduce  into  counties  the  provision  which  copy-holders 
and  lease-holders  within  Parliamentary  boroughs  now  pos- 
sessed for  the  purpose  of  county  votes.  Then  came  a  sav- 
ings-bank franchise.  All  male  adults  who  had  deposited 
$250  in  a  savings-bank  for  two  years  would  be  entitled  to 
be  registered  for  the  place  in  which  they  j-esided.  This 
would  add  10,000  to  15,000  electors  to  the  constituencies 
of  England  and  Wales.  The  rate-paying  clauses  of  the  Re- 
form act  wero  to  be  abolished;  this  would  admit  25,000 


RECEIVING  ELECTION  RETURNS  AT  THK  RKFOKM  CI.UB 


TI1K    CI.LAT    VvOlJi.    OF    IJSFOi^l.  19] 

voters  above  the  line  of  $50.  There  was  also  to  be  a  lodger 
franchise,  and  a  $50  annual  value  of  apartments  franchise. 
The  bill  would  add  400,000  new  voters  to  the  constituencies 
Mr.  Gladstone's  great  speech  on  the  introduction  of  the  bill 
was  called  for  a  time  "the  banner  speech  of  reform."  The 
speech  closed  thus: 

' '  If  issue  is  taken  adversely  upon  this  bill,  I  hope  it  wTill 
be,  above  all,  a  plain  and  direct  issue.  I  trust  it  will  be 
taken  upon  the  question,  whether  there  is  or  is  not  to  be  an 
enfranchisement  downwards,  if  it  is  to  be  taken  at  all.  We 
have  felt  that  to  carry  enf ranchisnment  above  the  present 
line  was  essential;  essential  to  character,  essential  to  credit, 
essential  to  usefulness ;  essential  to  the  character  and  credit 
not  merely  of  the  Government,  not  merely  of  the  political 
party  by  which  it  has  the  honor  to  be  represented,  but  of 
this  House,  and  of  the  successive  Parliaments  and  Govern- 
ments, who  all  stand  pledged  with  respect  to  this  question 
of  the  representation.  We  cannot  consent  to  look  upon 
this  large  addition,  considerable  although  it  may  be,  to  the 
political  power  of  the  working  classes  of  this  country,  as  if 
it  was  an  addition  fraught  with  mischief  and  with  danger. 
We  cannot  look,  and  we  hope  no  man  will  look,  upon  it  as 
some  Trojan  horse  approaching  the  walls  of  the  sacred  city, 
and  filled  with  armed  men,  bent  upon  ruin,  plunder  and  con- 
flagration. We  cannot  join  in  comparing  it  with  the  mon- 
sti^um  infehx — we  cannot  say — 

" Scandit  fatalis  machina  muros, 

Foeta  armis  :  mediae  minans  illabitur  urbi." 

I  believe  that  those  persons  whom  we  ask  you  to  enfran- 
chise ought  rather  to  be  welcomed,  as  you  would  welcome 
recruits  to  your  army,  or  children  to  your  family.  We 
ask  you  to  give  within  what  you  consider  to  be  the  just  lim- 
its of  prudence  and  circumspection  ;  but,  having  once  deter- 
mined those  limits,  to  give  with  an  ungrudging  hand.  Con- 
sider what  you  can  safely  and  justly  afford  to  do  in  admit- 


192  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

ting  new  subjects  and  citizens  within  the  pale  of  the  Parlia- 
mentary constitution  ;  and  having  so  considered  it,  do  not, 
I  beseech  you,  perform  the  act  as  if  you  were  compounding 
with  danger  and  misfortune.  Do  it  as  if  you  were  confer- 
ring a  boon  that  will  be  felt  and  reciprocated  in  grateful 
attachment.  Give  to  these  persons  new  interests  in  the 
Constitution,  new  interests  which,  by  the  beneficent  pro- 
cesses of  the  law  of  nature  and  of  Providence,  shall  beget  in 
them  new  attachment;  for  the  attachment  of  the  people  to 
the  Throne,  the  institutions,  and  the  laws  under  which  they 
live  is,  after  all,  more  than  gold  and  silver,  or  more  than 
fleets  and  armies,  at  once  the  strength,  the  glory,  and  the 
safety  of  the  land. 

Mr.  Lowe,  who  had  just  returned  from  Austrailia,  a  bril- 
liant and  incisive  speaker,  attacked  the  bill.  Mr.  Laing 
and  Mr.  Horsman  deserted  the  Government.  The  latter  ob- 
serving that  Mr.  Gladstone's  speech  was  "another  promise 
made  to  be  broken,  another  political  fraud  and  Parliament- 
ary juggle. "  This  brought  John  Bright  to  his  feet  with 
one  of  those  caustic  retorts,  for  which  the  great  "Tribune  of 
the  People,"  was  celebrated.  He  ridiculed  the  idea  of  Mr. 
Horsman  and  Mr.  Lowe,  forming  a  third  party :  Mr. 
Horsman, "  he  said,  '  'has  retired  into  what  may  be  called  his 
political  Cave  of  Adullam,  to  which  he  invited  every  one 
who  wras  in  distress  and  every  one  who  was  discontented.  He 
has  long  been  anxious  to  found  a  party  in  the  House;  and 
there  is  scarcely  a  member  at  this  end  of  the  House  who  is 
able  to  address  us  with  effect  or  to  take  much  part,  whom 
he  has  not  tried  to  bring  over  to  -his  party  and  his  cabal. 
At  last  he  has  succeeded  in  hooking  the  right  hon.  gentle- 
man the  member  for  Calne,  Mr.  Lowe.  I  know  it  was  the 
opinion  many  years  ago  of  a  member  of  the  Cabinet  that 
two  men  could  make  a  party.  When  a  party  is  formed  of 
two  men  so  amiable  and  so  disinterested  as  the  two  right 
hon.  gentlemen,  we  may  hope  to  see  for  the  first  time  in 


THE    GREAT    WORK    OF    REFORM. 


193 


Parliament,  a  party  perfectly  harmonious  and  distinguished 
by  mutual  and  unbroken  trust.  But  there  is  one  difficulty 
which  it  is  impossible  to  remove.  This  party  of  two  is  like 
the  Scotch  terrier  that  was  so  covered  with  hair  that  you 
could  not  tell  which  was  the  head  and  which  was  the  tail. " 


THE    THIRD    TARTY. 

The  bill  met  with  fierce  opposition.  The  country  was 
thoroughly  aroused.  In  all  the  large  towns  in  the  north  of 
England,  large  meetings  were  held,  and  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  those  who  had  no  vote,  no  share  in  the  government 
of  the  country  whose  burdens  they  bore, — and  all  because 
they  could  not  afford  to  pay  $50  rental,  began  to  understand 
who  were  their  true  friends.  Mr.  Bright  wrote  a  strong 
letter  to  his  constituents  at  Rochdale,  in  which  he  referred 


194  LIFE    OF    GLADSTUXR. 

to  the  opposition  as  "a  dirty  conspiracy,"  and  added:  "The 
men  who,  in  every  speech  they  utter,  insult  the  working 
men,  describing  them  as  a  multitude  given  up  to  ignorance 
and  vice,  will  be  the  first  to  yield  when  the  popular  will  is 
loudly  and  resolutely  expressed." 

At  a  great  meeting  held  in  Liverpool  Mr.  Gladstone  said : 
"Having  produced  this  measure,  founded  in  a  spirit  of  mod- 
eration, v?e  hope  to  support  it  with  decision.  It  is  not  in 
our  power  to  secure  the  passage  of  the  measure;  that  rests 
more  with  you,  and  more  with  those  whom  you  represent, 
and  of  whom  you  are  a  sample,  than  it  does  with  us.  kStill, 
we  have  a  great  responsibility,  and  are  conscious  of  it;  and 
we  do  not  intend  to  flinch  from  it.  We  stake  ourselves — we 
stake  our  existence  as  a  Government — and  we  also  stake  our 
political  character  on  the  adoption  of  the  bill  in  its  main 
provisions.  You  have  a  right  to  expect  from  us  that  we 
should  tell  you  what  we  mean,  and  that  the  trumpet  which 
it  is  our  business  to  blow,  should  give  forth  no  uncertain 
sound.  Its  sound  has  not  been,  and,  I  trust,  will  not  be, 
uncertain.  We  have  passed  the  Rubicon — we  have  broken 
the  bridge,  and  burned  the  boats  behind  us.  We  have  ad- 
visedly cut  off  the  means  of  retreat,  and  having  done  this, 
we  hope  that,  as  far  as  time  is  yet  permitted,  we  have  done 
our  duty  to  the  Crown  and  to  the  nation. 

At  the  close  of  this  great  debate  Mr.  Gladstone  made  a 
reference  to  Mr.  Disraeli's  fear  lest  the  Constitution  should 
be  reconstructed  on  American  principles: 

"At  last  we  have  obtained  a  declaration  from  an  authori- 
tative source  that  a  bill  which,  in  a  country  with  five  millions 
of  adult  males,  proposes  to  add  to  a  limited  constituency 
200,000  of  the  middle  class  and  200,000  of  the  working 
class,  is,  in  the  judgment  of  the  leader  of  the  Tory  party,  a 
bill  to  reconstruct  the  Constitution  upon  American  principles. ' ' 

But,  in  the  closing  speech  of  that  great  debate,  Mr. 
Gladstone  administered  a  flagellation  to  the  Right  Hon. 


THE    GREAT    WORK    OF    REFORM.  195 

Benjamin  Disraoli  which  he  probably  never  forgot.      Ad- 
dressing him,  Mr.  Gladstone  said: 

"The  right  honorable  gentleman,  secure  in  the  recollection  of  his 
own  consistency,  has  taunted  me  with  the  errors  of  my  boyhood. 
When  he  addressed  the  honorable  member  for  Westminster,  he  showed 
his  magnanimity  by  declaring  that  he  would  not  take  the  philosopher 
to  task  for  what  he  wrote  twenty-five  years  ago;  but  when  he  caught 
one  who,  thirty-six  years  ago,  just  emerged  from  boyhood,  and  still 
an  undergraduate  at  Oxford,  had  expressed  an  opinion  adverse  to  the 
Reform  Bill  of  1832,  of  which  he  had  so  long  and  bitterly  repented, 
then  the  right  honorable  gentleman  could  not  resist  the  temptation. 
He,  a  Parliamentary  leader  of  twenty  years'  standing,  is  BO  ignorant  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  that  he  positively  thought  he  got  a  Parlia- 
mentary Advantage  -by  exhibiting  me  as  an  opponent  of  the  Reform 
Bill  of  1832.  As  the  right  honorable  gentleman  has  exhibited  me,  let 
me  exhibit  myself .  It  is  true,  I  deeply  regret  it,  but  I  was  bred  under 
the  shadow  of  the  great  name  of  Canning.  Every  influence  connected 
with  that  name  governed  the  politics  of  my  childhood  and  of  my 
youth.  With  Canning  I  rejoiced  in  the  removal  of  religious  disabili- 
ties and  in  the  character  which  he  gave  to  our  policy  abroad.  With 
Canning  I  rejoiced  in  the  opening  which  he  made  toward  the  estab- 
lishment of  free  commercial  interchanges  between  nations.  With 
Canning,  and  under  the  shadow  of  that  great  name,  and  under  the 
shadow  of  that  yet  more  venerable  name  of  Burke,  I  grant,  my 
youthful  mind  and  imagination  were  impressed  just  the  same  as  the 
mature  mind  of  the  right  honorable  gentleman  is  now  impressed.  I 
had  conceived  that  fear  and  alarm  of  the  first  Reform  Bill  in  the 
days  of  my  undergraduate  career  at  Oxford,  which  the  right  honorable 
gentleman  now  feels  ;  and  the  only  difference  between  us  is  this — I 
thank  him  for  bringing  it  out — that,  having  those  views,  I  moved  the 
Oxford  Union  Debating  Society  to  express  them  clearly,  plainly, 
forcibly,  in  downright  English,  and  that  the  right  honorable  gentle- 
man is  still  obliged  to  skulk  under  the  cover  of  the  amendment  of  the 
noble  lord.  I  envy  him  not  one  particle  of  the  polemical  advantage 
which  he  has  gained  by  his  discreet  reference  to  the  proceedings  of 
the  Oxford  Union  Debating  Society,  in  the  year  of  grace  1831.  My 
position,  sir,  in  regard  to  the  Liberal  party,  is  in  all  points  the  oppo- 
site of  Earl  Russell's I  have  none  of  the  claims  he 

possesses.  I  came  among  you  an  outcast  from  those  with  whom  I 
associated;  driven  from  them,  I  admit,  by  no  arbitrary  act,  but  by  the 
slow  and  resistless  forces  of  conviction.  I  came  among  you,  to  make 
use  of  the  legal  phraseology,  in  forma  pauperis.  I  had  nothing  to 
offer  you  but  faithful  and  honorable  service.  Yo.u  received  me,  as 
Dido  received  the  shipwrecked  ^Eneas — 

'Ejeetum  littore,  egentum  accepi.' 


196  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

and  I  only  trust  you  may  not  hereafter  at  any  time  have  to  complete 
the  sentence  in  regard  to  me — 

'  Etregni,  demons,  in   parte  locavi.' 

You  received  me  with  kindness,  indulgence,  generosity,  and,  I  may 
even  say,  with  some  measure  of  confidence.  And  the  relation  between 
us  has  assumed  such  a  form  that  you  can  never  be  my  debtors,  but 
that  I  must  forever  be  in  your  debt.  It  is  not  from  me,  under  such 
circumstances,  that  any  word  will  proceed  that  can  savor  of  the  char- 
acter which  the  right  honorable  gentleman  imputes  to  the  conduct  of 
the  Government  with  respect  to  the  present  bill." 

Turning  then  to  the  more  particular  business  of  the  hour, 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  concluded: 

"  Sir,  we  are  assailed  ;  this  bill  is  in  a  state  of  crisis  and  of  peril, 
and  the  Government  along  with  it.  We  stand  or  fall  with  it,  as  has 
been  declared  by  my  noble  friend,  Lord  Russell.  We  stand  with  it 
now  ;  we  may  fall  with  it  a  short  time  hence.  If  we  do  so  fall,  we, 
or  others  in  our  places,  shall  rise  with  it  hereafter.  I  shall  not 
attempt  to  measure  with  precision  the  forces  that  are  to  be  arrayed 
against  us  in  the  coming  issue.  Perhaps  the  great  division  of  to- 
night is  not  the  last  that  must  take  place  in  the  struggle.  At  some 
point  of  the  contest  you  may  possibly  succeed.  You  may  drive  us 
from  our  seats.  You  may  bury  the  bill  that  we  have  introduced,  but 
we  will  write  upon  its  gravestone  for  an  epitaph  this  line,  with  cer- 
tain confidence  in  its  fulfillment — 

'  Exoriare  aliquis  nostris  ex  ossibus  ultor.' 

You  cannot  fight  against  the  future.  Time  is  on  our  side.  The  great 
social  forces  which  move  onward  in  their  might  and  majesty,  and 
which  the  tumult  of  our  debates  does  not  for  a  moment  impede  or 
disturb — those  great  social  forces  are  against  you;  they  are  mar- 
shaled on  our  side ;  and  the  banner  which  we  now  carry  in  this  fight, 
though  perhaps  at  some  moment  it  may  droop  over  our  sinking 
heads,  yet  it  soon  again  will  float  in  the  eye  of  Heaven,  and  it  will  be 
borne  by  the  firm  hands  of  the  united  people  of  the  three  kingdoms, 
perhaps  not  to  an  easy,  but  to  a  certain  and  to  a  not  far  distant  vic- 
tory." 

The  division  took  place  under  circumstances  of  the  greatest 
excitement.  The  Speaker  having  put  the  question,  mem- 
bers withdrew.  In  due  course  the  result  was  known — Ayes, 
318;  noes,  313.  Government  majority,  5. 

It  was  the  privilege  of  the  present  writer  to  be  present 
on  this  memorable  occasion.  But,  another  who  was  present 
shall  describe  the  scene  : 


THE    GREAT    WORK    OF    REFORM.  197 

"  Hardly  had  the  •words  escaped  the  tellers  lips  than  there  arose  a 
wild,  raging,  mad-brained  shout  from  the  floor  and  gallery  such  as  has 
never  been  heard  in  the  present  House  of  Commons.  Dozens  of  half- 
frantic  Tories  stood  up  in  their  seats,  madly  waved  their  hats,  and 
hurrahed  at  the  top  of  their  voices.  Strangers  in  both  galleries 
clapped  their  hands.  The  Adullamites  on  the  Ministerial  benches, 
carried  away  by  the  delirium  of  the  moment,  waved  their  hats  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  Opposition,  and  cheered  as  loudly  as  any.  The  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Exchequer,  in  his  speech,  had  politely  performed  the 
operation  of  holding  a  candle  to — Lucifer  (Mr.  Lowe);  and  he,  the 
prince  of  the  revolt,  the  leader,  instigator,  and  prime  mover  of  the 
conspiracy,  stood  up  in  the  excitement  of  the  moment — flushed,  tri- 
umphant, and  avenged.  His  hair,  brighter  than  silver,  shone  and 
glistened  in  the  brilliant  light.  His  complexion  had  deepened  into 
something  like  bishop's  purple.  His  small,  regular,  and  almost 
woman-like  features,  always  instinct  with  intelligence,  now  mantled 
with  the  liveliest  pleasure.  He  took  off  his  hat,  waved  it  in  wide  and 
triumphant  circles  over  the  heads  of  the  very  men  who  had  just  gone 
into  the  lobby  against  him.  "Who  would  have  thought  there  were 
so  much  in  Bob  Lowe?  "  said  one  member  to  another;  "why,  he  was 
one  of  the  cleverest  men  in  Lord  Palmerston's  Government!  "  "All 
this  comes  of  Lord  Russell's  sending  for  Goschen,"  was  the  reply. 
"Disraeli  did  not  half  so  signally  avenge  himself  against  Peel,"  inter- 
posed another;  "Lowe  has  very  nearly  broken  up  the  Liberal  party.'' 
These  may  seem  to  be  exaggerated  estimates  of  the  situation;  but  in 
that  moment  of  agitation  and  excitement  I  dare  say  a  hundred  sillier 
things  were  said  and  agreed  to.  Anyhow,  there  he  stood — that  usually 
cold,  undemonstrative,  intellectual,  white-headed,  red  faced,  vener- 
able-looking arch-conspirator!  shouting  himself  hoarse,  like  the  ring- 
leader of  schoolboys  at  a  successful  barring-out,  and  amply  repaid  at 
that  moment  for  all  Sky-terrier  witticisms  and  any  amount  of  popu- 
lar obloquy!  But  see,  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  lifts  up  his 
hand  to  bespeak  silence,  as  if  he  had  something  to  say  in  regard  to  the 
result  of  the  division.  But  the  more  the  great  orator  lifts  his  hand 
beseechingly,  the  more  the  cheers  are  renewed  and  the  hats  waved. 
At  length  the  noise  comes  to  an  end  by  the  process  of  exhaustion,  and 
the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  rises.  Then  there  is  a  universal 
hush,  and  you  might  hear  a  pin  drop.  He  simply  says,  "Sir,  I  pro- 
pose to  fix  the  committee  for  Monday,  and  I  will  then  state  the  order 
of  business."  It  was  twilight,  brightening  into  day,  when  we  got 
out  into  the  welcome  fresh  air  of  New  Palace  Yard.  Early  as  was  the 
hour,  about  three  hundred  persons  were  assembled  to  see  the  mem- 
bers come  out,  and  to  cheer  the  friends  of  the  bill.  It  was  a  night  to 
be  long  remembered.  The  House  of  Commons  had  listened  to  the 
grandest  oration  ever  yet  delivered  by  the  greatest  orator  of  his  age; 


198  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

and  had  then  to  ask  itself  how  it  happened  that  the  Liberal  party  had 
been  disunited,  and  a  Liberal  majority  of  sixty  'muddled  away.'  " 

On  the  third  reading  of  the  Bill,  the  Government  were 
placed  in  a  minority  of  11.  The  numbers  being  for  the 
Amendment,  315;  against,  304. 

The  Opposition  had  at  length  succeeded  in  their  hostility 
to  Reform  and  to  the  Ministry.  On  the  following  day,  the 
19th  of  June,  Earl  Russell  in  the  Lords  and  Mr.  Gladstone 
in  the  Commons,  announced  that,  in  consequence  of  their 
late  defeat,  the  Government  had  felt  it  their  duty  to  make 
a  communication  to  her  Majesty.  On  the  26th  fuller  ex- 
planations were  furnished  in  both  Houses.  In  the  Lords, 
Earl  Russell  stated  that  Ministers  had  tendered  their  resig- 
nations, to  which  they  had  adhered,  notwithstanding  an  ap- 
peal from  the  Queen  to  reconsider  their  determination.  In 
the  House-  of  Commons,  Mr.  Gladstone  defended  the  Gov- 
ernment for  their  resolve  to  stand  or  fall  by  the  bill,  and 
, explained  at  length  the  circumstances  which  led  to  that  dec- 
laration. Such  a  pledge,  he  admitted,  was  one  which  a 
Government  should  rarely  give. 

* '  It  was  the  last  weapon  in  the  armory  of  the  Govern- 
ment ;  it  should  not  be  lightly  taken  down  from  the  walls; 
and  if  it  is  taken  down,  it  should  not  be  lightly  replaced; 
nor  till  it  has  served  the  purposes  it  was  meant  to  fulfill. 
The  pledge  had  been  given,  however,  under  the  deepest  con- 
viction of  public  duty,  and  had  the  effect  of  making  them 
use  every  effort  in  their  power  to  avoid  offence,  to  conciliate, 
support,  and  unite,  instead  of  distracting. " 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

HUMORS   OF   THE    OLD    ELECTION    DAYS. 

Dost  thou  think  because  thou  art  virtuous  there  shall  be  no  more 
cakes  and  ale  ?  Yes,  by  Saint  Anne,  and  ginger  shall  be  hot  in  the 
mouth,  too. — Shakespeare. 

The  rabble  all  alive 

From  tippling  benches,  cellars,  stalls  and  sties, 
Swarm  in  the  streets.  — William  Cowper. 

They  praise  and  they  admire,  they  know  not  what, 
And  know  not  whom,  but  as  one  leads  the  other  ; 
And  what  delight  to  be  by  such  extoll'd, 
To  live  upon  their  tongues,  and  be  their  talk, 
Of  whom  to  be  dispraised,  were  no  small  praise. 

— John  Milton. 

This  is  a  chapter  of  personal  reminiscences.  In  the  old  days 
of  "  long  ago, "  when  riding  in  steam  cars  was  somewhat  of  an 
experiment;  when  devout  souls  thought  it  was  running 
against  providence  to  ride  in  coaches  driven. without  horses 
at  the  awful  rate  of  twenty  miles  an  hour  ;  when  the  tele- 
graph was  but  a  dream,  and  the  weekly  newspaper  was  so 
expensive,  by  reason  of  the  absurd  and  iniquitous  stamp 
duty,  that  poor  folks  formed  clubs  of  five  or  six  in  order 
that  they  might  know  what  was  going  on  "  in  Lunnon  and 
other  parts,"  it  will  be  easily  understood  that  in  these 
dreary,  quiet  times,  any  circumstance  out  of  the  common 
order  of  things,  such  as  a  balloon  ascension,  or  a  very  small 
circus,  was-heartily  welcome.  The  smallest  of  these  things 
was  big  enough  to  break  the  monotony  of  life,  and  stir  the 
sluggish  souls  of  young  and  old.  The  annual  election  of 
Mayor,  Aldermen  and  town  Councilors  was  quite  a  blessing. 
But  a  general  election  of  members  to  serve  her  gracious 
Majesty  in  the  Commons  House  of  Parliament  was  a  god- 


200  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

send  !  Old  political  soldiers  who  had  fought  in  former 
years,  but  had  never  been  rich  enough  to  vote,  told  of  the 
stormy  scenes  of  the  old  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  They  talked 
of  "  Billy  Pitt"  and  "Little  Lord  John  "  as  though  they 
had  been  next-door  neighbors.  But  in  the  days  of  which  I 
speak  the  older  men  were  mostly  given  up  to  memories  and 
reminiscences  ;  the  younger  men  were  full  of  fight,  and  they 
had  sufficient  cause  to  be.  The  Reform  Bill  of  Lord  John 
Russell  had  given  a  £10-householder  a  vote.  The  man  who 
paid  the  $50  a  year  rent,  apart  altogether  from  the  innu- 
merable taxes — highway  tax,  poor-law  tax,  etc.,  etc. — that 
formed  a  perfect  chatelaine  about  the  girdle  of  rent  that 
bound  him,  was  entitled  to  a  vote,  but  a  man  might  be  in  all 
respects  the  equal,  or  even  the  superior  of  the  "Ten 
Pounder,"  he  might  even  live  in  a  better  house,  but  if  he 
only  paid  $49.99  he  could  not  vote.  It  was  the  money  that 
did  the  voting,  not  the  man.  The  odd  cent  made  all  the 
difference. 

Apostles  of  human  rights — such  men  as  Thomas  Watson, 
Henry  Hethrington,  Thomas  Cooper,  Henry  Vincent  among 
the  poor,  and  such  men  as  John  Bright,  Joseph  Sturge, 
Earnest  Jones  and  others  among  the  well-to-do  classes — 
found  the  time  ripe  for  the  promulgation  of  their  doctrines, 
and  a  general  election  was  just  the  grandest  of  all  occasions  ; 
a  sort  of  political  Pentecost,  when  men  with  hearts  in  ear- 
nest and  tongues  aflame,  made  the  most  of  their  opportunities 
of  unfettered  speech.  The  dissolution  of  Parliament  was 
the  sure  and  certain  sign  that  there  would  be  real  earnest 
work,  beautiful  fighting,  and  merry  times  all  over  England 
for  the  space  of  six  weeks.  Her  Majesty  issued  writs  for 
a  new  Parliament,  her  faithful  and  loving  subjects  were 
enjoined  to  elect  their  representatives,  and  they  were 
charged  to  be  in  their  places  in  six  weeks  from  the  date  of 
the  writs,  when  the  gentlemanly  usher  of  the  black  rod 
would  ring  the  bell  and  business  would  begin. 


-I---.:- 


••  *---T-  r.rvTj 


HUMORS    OF    THE    OLD    ELECTION    DAYS.  2'Jl 

At  the  dissolution  of  Parliament  the  Queen  read  a  speech, 
which  was  always  very  formal  and  empty,  indicating  cer- 
tain things  that  everybody  knew,  expressing  royal  gratitude 
to  both  Houses  of  Parliament,  and  then  as  in  duty  bound, 
the  Queen  committed  her  lords  and  commons  and  the  people 
at  large  to  the  care  of  Almighty  God.  All  this  was  exceed- 
ingly well  done.  Long  before  the  end  of  the  six  weeks' 
conflict  it  was  painfully  manifest  that  the  lords  and  com- 
mons, the  electors  and  the  non-electors,  and  the  country  at 
large  were  all  very  much  in  need  of  divine  guidance.  The 
most  appropriate  prayers  for  those  times  would  have  been 
u  prayers  for  tljose  that  are  at  sea." 

.  No  sooner  was  the  dissolution  of  Parliament  announced, 
than  there  was  a  great  desire  to  get  a  copy  of  the  Queen's 
speech.  There  was  not  an  evening  paper  in  the  whole  wide 
world  in  these  days.  Enterprising  printers  printed  the 
speech  and  soon  the  ancestors  of  our  newsboys  made  the 
streets  echo  with  their  cries:  "  Queen's  speech  !  Parliament 
'solved  !  Queen's  speech  !  Only  a  penny  !" 

The  Queen's  speech  had  nothing  in  it  to  form  a  text  for 
political  oratory,  but — as  we  shall  see  in  a  little  while — the 
emptiness  of  the  speech  gave  the  Radical  orator  themes 
enough  and  to  spare. 

Members  of  Parliament  are  not  paid  a  salary,  nor  are 
their  traveling  expenses  covered.  They  would  consider  it 
beneath  their  dignity  to  accept  a  cent  for  their  services. 
The  old  school  English  Tory  would  deplore  exceedingly  the 
coming  of  the  time  when  members  of  Parliament  should  be 
paid  for  their  services,  or  the  hard  and  fast  * '  property 
qualifications  "  should  be  repealed. 

In  these  old  days,  now  under  consideration,  there  were 
not  a  few  "  pocket  boroughs,"  that  is,  constituencies  in 
which  some  noble  lord  or  immense  landowner  had  what  was 
called  "paramount  influence."  He  could  really  send  who- 
ever he  liked  to  Parliament.  He  could  send  his  own  butler, 


202  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

if  he  chose.    And  it  would  have  been  a  good  thing  if  he  had 

o  o 

done  so  sometimes,  instead  of  sending  such  men  as  some- 
times crept  through  this  subterranean  way  into  the  stately 
halls  of  St.  Stephen's.  Taking  him  all  in  all,  however,  the 
English  M.  P.  was  fairly  representative,  and  if  England 
owes  nothing  else  to  her  worthy  Commoners,  she  owes  them 
this  at  least :  they  have  saved  her  from  her  Lords  many  a 
time;  and  it  may  be  that  the  day  is  not  far  distant  when  the 
redemption  will  be  complete,  and  the  House  of  Lords  will 
be  devoted  to  some  useful  purpose. 

During  the  six  weeks  of  a  general  election  the  gentleman 
who  has  been  M.  P.  and  wants  to  be  M.  P.  again  must  put 
his  dignity  in  his  pocket,  for  this  is  the  time  when  the  cos.- 
ter-monger  and  the  cabman,  "the  brewer,  the  baker,  and 
the  candlestick  maker "  will  feel  called  upon  to  put  him 
through  his  facings.  He  will  be  asked  all  sorts  of  ques- 
tions, reasonable  and  unreasonable,  especially  unreasonable. 
Smart  men,  just  for  the  fun  of  it,  will  try  to  draw  from  him 
the  most  absurd  and  foolish  pledges.  And  woe  betide  the 
M.  P.  who  weary  of  such  badgering  should  remind  his  tor- 
menters  of  the  dignity  of  his  position. 

A  somewhat  short-tempered  candidate  who  had  repre- 
sented the  borough  before  grew  tired  of  this  badgering, 
and  said  to  the  noisy  nonelectors  : 

"My  good  fellows,  do  you  know  who  I  am  ?  I  am  the 
Representative  of  the  people  !  " 

"Oh,  you  be  bio  wed !"  answered  the  rude  and  noisy 
enthusiast.  "Aint'we  the  people  themselves?  Ain't  we 
a  sending  of  yer?  And  don't  you  think  we're  bloom  in' 
kind?" 

But  the  day  of  nomination  was  the  greatest  day  of  all  in 
an  English  election  till  our  later  civilization  came  along  and 
took  all  the  fun  out  of  the  fair  and  made  an  election  as 
serious  and  uneventful  as  a  third-class  funeral.  In  the  old, 
merry  times  a  temporary  covered  platform  called  "The 


THE  CANDIDA!'*; 


HUMORS    OF    THE    OLD    ELECTION    DAYS.  203 

Hustings "  was  erected,  and  on  the  given  day  the  Mayor, 
with  his  stately  robes  on,  and  the  golden  civic  chain  around 
his  neck,  would  march  in  grand  procession  to  the  hustings, 
accompanied  by  other  civic  dignitaries,  and  there,  in  the 
presence  of  an  enormous  crowd,  would  show  the  writ  and 
announce  that  in  loyal  obedience  to  the  command  of  her 
gracious  Majesty  that  he  had  called  together  the  electors  of 
this  ancient  loyal  borough  to  elect  two  fit  and  proper  per- 
sons to  represent  this  borough  in  the  Commons  House  of 
Parliament. 

Then,  with  a  hearty  "  God  Save  the  Queen,"  the  business 
would  begin.  According  to  arrangement  the  Tories  would 
propose  and  second  their  candidate  in  a  brief  way ;  then  the 
Liberals  or  Radicals  would  propose  their  man.  The  Mayor 
would  call  for  a  show  of  hands  on  the  part  of  the  electors 
only.  The  mayor  would  usually  decide  against  his  own 
party,  by  which  method  he  would  be  sure  to  win  a  little  glory 
as  "a  high-minded,  impartial,  incorruptible  public  officer." 
A  "poll "would  be  demanded  by  some  representative  of  the 
supposed  minority,  all  of  which  the  high-minded,  incor- 
ruptible Mayor  would  arrange  for,  and  so  with  another 
hearty  "God  Save  the  Queen"  the  battle  of  the  election 
would  begin.  Then  the  walls  of  the  city  would  be  covered 
with  squibs  and  cartoons.  Each  candidate  would  issue  his 
address,  which  would  form  the  text  for  commendation  or 
attack  for  friends  and  enemies  alike.  Then  for  five  or  six 
weeks  life  would  be  well  worth  living,  no  matter  how  poor 
you  were.  The  weak  points,  the  foibles,  the  peculiarities  of 
the  candidates  would  afford  topics  for  boundless  amusement. 
But  it  is  fair  to  say  that  the  vulgar,  brutal  vivisection  of 
private  life  that  mars  too  many  of  our  conflicts,  did  not 
enter  into  these  old  election  fights.  Full  to  the  brim  with 
humor,  but  free  from  vicious  and  bitter  slander,  they 
were  straightforward,  manly  fights.  Around  the  hustings 
the  battle  waged  hot  and  fierce.  The  rude  hustings  became 


204  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

a  grand  arena.  Remember  these  were  the  days  of  the  $50- 
voter.  The  nonelectors  were  largely  in  excess  of  the 
electors,  and  they  were  growing  to  be  a  power.  They 
would  be  heard,  and  there  were  many  of  them  well  worth 
hearing.  These  nonelectors  made  very  lively  times  for  the 
candidates  when  they  came  to  deliver  addresses.  They  would 
give  a  man  a  name  that  would  abide  with  him  forever  !  One 
candidate  I  well  remember,  who  was  thin  enough  for  exhibi- 
tion at  a  dime  museum,  came  before  the  "electors  and 
nonelectors";  his  name  was  Richardson.  He  was  one  of  the 
thinnest  men  I  ever  saw.  A  merry  wag  in  the  crowd  hailed 
him  as  "Fat  Dick!"  The  name  was  so  supremely  absurd 
that  it  stuck  to  him.  And  if  ever  you  go  to  the  town  of 
Never-mind-what,  in  the  north  of  England,  and  ask  for  Mr. 
Richardson,  you  will  meet  with  the  response  :  ' '  That  means 
'Fat  Dick'  for  sure  !  " 

I  remember  one  of  his  speeches  in  which  he  was  explain- 
ing the  reasons  that  had  led  him  to  sever  his  association 
with  the  old  Radical  party  and  join  the  Tories.  Just  in  the 
midst  of  his  speech,  which  was  really  a  very  able  one,  a  man 
was  hoisted  on  the  shoulders  of  the  crowd,  Avho  immediately 
proceeded  to  pull  off  his  coat,  and  turning  it  inside  out, 
struggled  to  get  it  on  again.  The  crowd  was  uproarious. 
But  "Fat  Dick"  was  equal  to  the  occasion.  "Am  I  to 
understand,"  said  Candidate  Richardson,  "that  I  have 
turned  my  coat  ?  Is  that  your  chief  objection  ?  Well, 
what  is  an  honest  man  to  do  when  he  finds  he  has  his  coat 
on  wrong  side  but  turn  it  ?  And  I  want  to  say  to  my  Radi- 
cal friends,  who  seem  to  deplore  my  loss  so  much,  that  if  I 
had  continued  in  their  ranks  much  longer  I  shouldn't  have 
had  a  coat  to  wear  or  turn. "  This  retort  caught  the  crowd, 
and  "Rah  for  Fat  Dick  ! "  rent  the  air. 

Not  infrequently  the  candidate  who  was  not  much  of  a 
speaker — though  in  all  other  respects  just  the  man  to  make 
a  most  valuable  member  of  Parliament — would  content 


HUMORS   OF   THE   OLD   ELECTION   DAYS.  205 

himself  with  going  over  the  ground  of  his  published  address, 
and  then,  making  a  genial  bow,  would  most  unwisely  under- 
take to  answer  any  questions  that  electors  or  nonelectors 
might  choose  to  ask. 

The  man  who  undertakes  to  answer  any  questions  that 
may  be  asked  is  not  wise.  It  is  so  easy  to  ask  difficult,  not 
to  say  foolish,  questions. 

Many  and  many  a  time  have  I  seen  a  political  gathering 
given  over  to  the  wildest  and  most  ungovernable  merriment 
by  some  foolish  question,  presented  with  no  reason  on  earth 
but  to  create  fun  and  to  embarrass  the  candidate.  Here  are 
a  handful  of  sample  questions,  some  of  which  were  capable 
of  a  direct,  simple  answer,  but  others  could  only  be  answered 
in  a  qualified  manner,  and  whenever  these  qualifications  were 
introduced  the  trouble  began.  The  questioner  always  wanted 
"a  simple,  straightforward  answer."  This  is  the  way  the 
poor  candidate  was  badgered  : 

"  If  we  send  you  to  Parliament  will  you  vote  for  the  abo- 
lition of  the  House  of  Lords  ? 

"Will  you  move  that  the  civil  list  be  revised  or  sus- 
pended ? 

' '  Will  you  vote  for  the  disestablishment  and  disendow- 
ment  of  the  Established  Church  ? 

' '  Will  you  vote  for  universal  suffrage  ? 

* '  Will  you  vote  for  the  abolition  of  the  property  qualifi- 
cation clause  ? 

"Will  you  always  vote  against  the  declaration  of  war 
whatever  be  the  provocation  ? 

"  Will  you  vote  that  a  man  may  marry  deceased  wife's 
sister  ? 

"  Will  you  vote  that  the  railroads  shall  become  national 
property  ? 

"Will  you  vote  for  the  May  worth  grant  ? 

"Will  you  vote  for  the  repeal  of  the  income  tax  ? 

' '  Will  you  vote  for  the  repeal  of  capital  punishihent  ?  " 


206  LIFE    OF   GLADSTONE. 

So  the  questioning  would  go  on.  The  only  chance  for 
the  candidate  was  to  answer  "yes"  or  "no,"  wherever  he 
had  a  chance.  If  he  wavered  he  was  lost.  There  was 
always  some  fellow  handy  with  a  foolish  question.  I  remem- 
ber a  smart  Alec,  named  Reuben  Finn,  who  could  always  be 
relied  upon  to  upset  a  meeting.  He  had  a  question: 

"Mr.  Candidate,"  said  Reuben,  "I  have  a  plain,  simple 
question  to  ask.  A  question  that  is  capable  of  the  simplest, 
shortest  answer.  And  I  don't  want  you  to  go  beating  about 
the  bush.  I  want  just  a  plain,  unmistakable  'yes'  or  'no. ' ' 

"  All  right, "  said  the  candidate,  "go  ahead  with  your 
question. " 

"Well,  then,"  said  Reuben,  "Will  you  lend  me  a  sov- 
ereign ?" 

The  laughter  that  followed  his  question  was  long  and  loud, 
but  the  answer  so  completely  crushed  Reuben  Finn  that  it 
was  a  long  time  before  he  asked  any  more  questions. 

"Lend  you  a  sovereign  !"  said  the  candidate,  "I'll  give 
you  a  sovereign  if  you  can  find  a  bigger  fool  than  yourself 
in  twenty-four  hours,  and  I'll  lend  you  a  lantern  to  hunt 
him  up." 

Sometimes  nonconformist  clergymen  would  enter  the 
arena,  and  they  were  generally  powerful  allies.  They  were 
earnest  and  eloquent,  and  sure  of  a  large  following.  But 
sometimes  they  were  terribly  roasted  by  the  other  side. 
One  case  comes  to  my  memory.  It  was  in  the  good  Did 
town  of  Leicester.  The  Rev.  J.  P.  Mursell,  the  successor 
of  Robert  Hall,  was  a  man  of  wonderful  ability;  a  man  of 
grand  appearance,  with  a  crown  of  snowy  hair,  and  a  large 
and  prominent  nose.  He  was  at  a  great  political  meeting 
in  the  opera  house,  and  in  denouncing  the  retrograde  action 
of  certain  wealthy  hosiery  manufacturers,  who  had  grown 
conservative  as  they  had  grown  rich,  told  an  anecdote  of 
Robert  Hall,  who  on  being  importuned  to  marry  a  certain 
ancient  lady,  said  he  would  rather  "marry  Beelzebub's 


HODGE,  THE  YOUNG  AGRICULTURIST. 


HUMORS    OF    THE    OLD    ELECTION    DAYS.  207 

eldest  daughter,  and  go  live  with  the  old  folks."  Mr. 
Mursell  applied  the  anecdote  and  turned  up  his  nose  very 
manifestly  at  the  Tory  hosiers.  Immediately  the  following 
jingle  was  heard  sung  in  the  streets  of  Leicester  : 

There  is  a  parson  of  small  renown, 
Lives  on  the  New  Walk  in  Leicester  Town  ; 
Whose  hair  has  grown  gray  all  over  his  head 
Screams  aloud  for  Beelzebub's  daughter  ! 

From  his  peaceful  home  to  the  play-house  he  goes, 
And  insults  amongst  others  manufacturers  of  hose, 
And  at  them  in  spite  turns  up  his  great  nose, 
And  then  screams  for  Beelzebub's  daughter. 

In  a  few  days  the  walls  of  Leicester  were  placarded  with 
large  bills  of  which  the  following  is  a  copy : 

LECTURE    ON    NOSES!!! 

THE  REV.  J.  P.  MURSELL, 

Having  just  returned  from  the  Promontory  of  Noses, 
will  deliver  a  series  of  lectures  in 

BELVOIR   STREET   CHAPEL 

in  the  following  order  : 

Lecture  1.     The  Roman  Nose. 

Lecture  2.     The  Pug  Nose. 

Lecture  3.     The  Impudent  Nose. 
ILLUSTRATED  BY  HIS  OWN. 
Reserved  seats  free  to  Hosiery  Manufacturers. 

As  I  have  said,  the  hustings  during  these  six  weeks  was 
the  arena  of  a  great  deal  of  local  oratory.  I  remember  a 
young  Radical  who  could  always  gather  immense  crowds. 
He  was  an  iconoclast  pure  and  simple  and  oh  how  he  loved 
to  talk  ! 

"Look  here  mates,"  he  would  say,  "there's  some  things 
you  can  reform,  and  there's  others  you  can  only  reform  by 
reforming  them  off  the  face  of  the  earth  !  Now  look  at 
me.  I'm  not  such  a  bad  sort  of  a  chap,  am  I  ?  I  tries 


208 

hard  to  do  fair  and  square,  but  I  can't  vote.  'Cos  why  ? 
Why  it's  all  a  question  of  money.  There's  a  fellow  lives  in 
our  street ;  a  drunken,  lazy  sot,  as  wallops  his  wife  and 
lambs  his  kids,  but  he  can  vote.  'Cos  why  ?  He's  got 
money ;  that's  why.  I  pays  three  and  ninepence  a  week 
rent,  but  I  can't  vote  !  He  pays  four  shillings  a  week  and 
he  can  vote  and  does  vote  !  But  it  ain't  the  man  as  votes, 
it's  the  bloomin'  thruppence  !  Look  at  the  Queen  and  the 
Royal  family  !  I  should  like .  to  know  what  good  they  are 
to  the  country.  They  are  just  a  set  of  royal  paupers,  that's 
wot  they  are.  Mind  you,  I  don't  say  but  wot  Prince 
Albert  is  a  likely  kind  o'  cove,  and  if  he  had  his  way  things 
would  be  different.  But,  Lord  love  you,  all  the  big  bugs 
is  down  on  him.  'Cos  why  ?  'Cause  he  has  a  good  word  to 
say  for  the  workingman,  that's  why  !  Look  at  them  lazy 
fossils  in  the  House  o'  Lords.  Nothing  will  ever  wake  'em 
up  unless  somebody  yells  '  Church  in  danger, '  or  '  House 
afire  ! '  and  then  they'll  march  in  double  quick  time  !  I  tell 
you  mates  it's  time  that  House  was  to  somebody  as  has 
something  to  do.  And  then  there's  the  blessed  Church, 
established  by  law  and  fed  at  the  public  expense  !  I  ain't 
got  nothing  particular  against  the  Church,  but  I  think  if  a 
man  wants  either  pigs  or  parsons  he  should  feed  them,  and 
not  ask  the  State  to  do  it.  But  it's  no  use  talking.  Half 
measures  won't  do!  And  wot  I  say  is,  Down  with  the 
Royal  family!  Down  with  the  House  of  Lords!  Down 
with  the  Established  Church!  Down  with  everything!" 

Since  1832,  few  of  those  scenes  of  violence,  and  even  of 
bloodshed,  which  formerly  distinguished  Parliamentary 
elections  in  many  English  boroughs,  have  been  witnessed. 
Some  of  these  lawless  outbreaks  were  doubtless  due  to  the 
unpopularity  of  the  candidates  forced  upon  the  electors  ; 
but  even  in  the  larger  towns — where  territorial  influence 
had  little  sway — riots  occurred  upon  which  we  look  back 
now  in  almost  doubtful  amazement.  Men  holding  strong 


HUMORS    OF    THE    OLD    ELECTION    DAYS.  209 

political  views  have  ceased  to  enforce  those  views  by  the 
aid  of  brickbats  and  other  dangerous  missiles.  Yet  at  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century  such  arguments  were  very 
popular.  And  to  the  violence  which  prevailed  was  added 
the  most  unblushing  bribery.  Several  boroughs  long 
notorious  for  extensive  bribery  have  since  been  disfran- 
chised. The  practice,  however,  extended  to  most  towns  in 
the  kingdom,  though  it  was  not  always  carried  on  in  the 
same  open  manner.  By  a  long-established  custom,  a  voter 
at  Hull  received  a  donation  of  $10.00  or  $20.00  for  a 
plumper.  In  Liverpool  men  were  openly  paid  for  their 
votes;  and  Lord  Cochrane  stated  in  the  House  of  Commons 
that,  after  his  return  to  Honiton,  he  sent  the  town-crier 
round  the  borough  to  tell  the  voters  to  go  to  the  chiei 
banker  for  $50.00  each. 


CHAPTER   XX. 

DISESTABLISHMENT  AND  DISENDOWMENT  OF  THE  IRISH  CHURCH. 

It  is  held 

That  valor  is  the  chiefest  virtue,  and 
Most  dignifies  the  haver;  if  it  be, 
The  man  I  speak  of  cannot  in  the  world 
Be  singly  counterpoised.  — Shakespeare. 

If  a  man  stands  for  the  right  and  the  truth,  though  every  man's 
finger  be  pointed  at  him,  though  every  woman's  lip  be  curled  at  him 
in  scorn,  he  stands  in  a  majority;  for  God  and  good  angels  are  with 
him,  and  greater  are  they  that  are  for  him  than  all  that  can  be  against 
him  — John  B.  Qough. 

We  offer  our  readers  another  reminiscent  chapter.  When 
Mr.  Gladstone  rose  in  the  British  House  of  Commons  Mon- 
day afternoon,  Feb.  13,  1886,  to  present  his  home  rule  for 
Ireland  bill  many  called  to  mind  his  first  great  fight  for 
religious  equality  for  Ireland  more  than  twenty  years  ago. 
It  may  be  pleasant  to  men  of  this  younger  generation  to  be 
told  how  that  battle  for  the  disestablishment  and  disendow- 
ment  of  the  Irish  Church  was  fought  and  won. 

The  condition  of  affairs  may  be  very  briefly  told.  The 
population  of  Ireland  in  1867  was  about  six  millions.  Of 
these  six  millions  four  and  a  half  millions  belonged  to  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  Half  a  million  only  belonged  to 
the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  another  half  million  owed 
allegiance  to  the  Presbyterian  Church.  The  census  never 
gave  the  Irish  Church,  even  from  the  Episcopal  authorities, 
more  than  seven  hundred  thousand.  This  church  of  the 

minority  arrogating  to  itself  the  title  of  "The  Irish  Church," 

211 


212  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

or  "The  Church  of  Ireland,"  had  always  manifested  the 
warmest  sympathy  with  the  oppressors  of  Ireland,  and  was 
spending  public  money  in  an  unjust  and  unprofitable  manner. 
This  church  was  absorbing  in  annual  salaries  sums  amount- 
ing to  three  and  a  half  to  four  millions  of  dollars  derived 
from  National  property  amounting  to  from  sixty-five  to 
seventy  millions  of  dollars.  Much  of  this  money  was  wasted 
in  the  employment  of  three  or  four  times  as  many  rectors 
and  curates  as  the  church  could  possibly  have  use  for.  Yet 
all  the  while  Ireland  was  in  the  depths  of  poverty,  famine- 
threatened,  or  famine-smitten  from  year  to  year. 

To  change  all  this,  to  bring  in  the  reign  of  religious 
equality,  to  place  all  the  churches  in  Ireland  on  an  equal 
footing,  such  as  they  are  in  this  free  land,  and  to  apply 
these  vast  funds  that  were  being  so  shamefully  misused  to 
alleviate  the  sorrows  of  the  maimed  and  the  halt  and  the 
blind,  and  to  such  as  suffered  from  the  sadder  lot  of  mental 
weakness,  these  were  the  grand  purposes  Mr.  Gladstone  set 
his  hand  and  his  heart  to,  in  his  first  great  battle  on  behalf 
of  Ireland. 

I  am  thinking  how  that  great  battle  was  fought  and  won 
more  than  twenty  years  ago.  I  am  not  concerned  to  discuss 
at  length  the  merits  of  this  Irish  Church  measure,  nor  am  I 
disposed  to  underestimate  the  sincerity  of  those  who  really 
thought  Mr.  Gladstone  was  endangering  the  cause  of  true 
religion.  I  am  persuaded  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  him- 
self more  sincere  than  many  of  his  opponents.  Born  and 
trained  a  nonconformist  of  nonconformists  all  my  sympa- 
thies, if  not  my  prejudices,  ran  in  favor  of  disestablishment. 
Twenty  years  and  more  of  happy  observation  of  religious 
equality  beneath  the  Stars  and  Stripes  have  only  served  to 
deepen  my  conviction  that  Count  Cavour's  dream  for  Italy 
of  "A  Free  Church  in  a  free  State,"  is  a  very  good  dream 
for  all  lands. 


SACKVILLE  STREET,  DUBLIN. 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  213 

I  am  looking  back  over  the  stretch  of  twenty  years.  I 
am  calling  to  mind  the  grandeur  of  the  battle,  of  the  calm, 
fixed  enthusiasm  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  whose  personal  influ- 
ence on  his  followers  was  largely  the  secret  of  the  steadfast 
valor  of  the  conflict  and  the  dignity  of  its  final  triumph. 

From  the  very  outset  this  battle  for  religious  equality 
was  elevated  to  the  dignity  of  a  conflict.  The  battle  for 
Reform  ,had  often  fallen  very  near  the  gutter.  On  both 
sides  of  this  religious  warfare  men  were  in  dead  earnest. 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  scarcely  laid  his  Bill  on  the  table  of  the 
House  of  Commons  before  the  floodgates  of  abuse  were 
thrown  wide  open.  It  was,  of  course,  the  easiest  thing  in 
the  world  to  charge  Mr.  Gladstone  with  treachery  to  his 
earliest  and  deepest  convictions,  he,  the  old-time  defender 
of  church  establishments.  He  was  a  "turncoat,"  a 
" traitor,"  a  "renegade,"  and  everything  else  of  the  kind. 

Then  uprose  the  Rt.  Hon.  Benjamin  Disraeli,  the  cham- 
pion of  the  church,  and  I  sometimes  think  ancient  Rome 
never  saw  gladiators  more  thoroughly  matched  than  Glad- 
stone and  Disraeli.  It  was  worth  while  living  in  those  days 
to  see  these  masters  of  debate  in  action.  Mr.  Disraeli  was 
too  wise  to  make  any  capital  out  of  the  change-of-mind 
argument.  He  knew  the  value  of  a  good  cry,  and  so  he 
started  the  memorable  cry,  "Church  in  Danger!"  He 
saw  the  sacred  fabric  of  the  time-honored  Church  tottering 
to  its  fall.  He  saw  angels  in  tears  over  the  desecration,  and 
declared  himself  on  the  side  of  the  angels.  All  other  points 
of  view  were  lost  sight  of  in  this  scare-crow  terror  of  peril 
to  the  Church.  The  ark  of  God  was  in  danger  ?  And  Dis- 
raeli came  to  the  rescue  ! 

Punch's  picture  of  the  subtle  Disraeli  soaring,  heaven- 
ward with  angel's  wings  and  a  wreath  of  immortal  glory 
about  his  brows,  while  there  was  a  smirk  of  satire  and 
scorn  on  his  lips,  will  be  remembered  by  every  man  who 
had  a  share  in  this  memorable  fight.  While  Mr.  Disraeli 


214:  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

was  shedding  mock  tears  over  the  downfall  of  Zion,  his 
followers  were  enjoying  themselves  in  belaboring  Mr. 
Gladstone. 

The  Church  and  Tory  papers  supplied  Mr.  Gladstone 
with  a  good  deal  of  information.  He  was  ' '  in  league  with 
infidelity,"  "an  atheist  at  heart,"  "a  sacriligious  robber," 
' '  a  spoliator  of  the  temple  of  God, "  he  was  the  ' '  man  of 
sin,"  the  "Anti-Christ"  foretold  in  the  "Book  of  Revela- 
tion." He  had  "the  mark  of  the  beast,"  and  "the  horns 
of  the  evil  one  "  protruding  from  his  wicked  brow.  So  hot 
and  fierce  was  the  conflict  that  I  have  seen  Mr.  Gladstone 
hung  in  efiigy  and  burned  in  more  than  two  or  three  of  the 
quiet  village  church-yards  in  the  North  of  England. 

Nothing  impresses  me  more  as  I  look  back  than  Mr. 
Gladstone's  perfect  indifference  to  this  whole  tirade  of  abuse. 
I  sometimes  wonder  if  he  knew  half  that  was  written  or 
said.  He  did  not  treat  calumny  with  scorn,  he  was  so 
absorbed  in  his  mission  that  he  lived  above  it.  I  am  think- 
ing, too,  of  his  brief  visits  to  our  committee-rooms  during 
that  grand  Lancashire  campaign,  that  campaign  in  which 
he  delivered  speeches  which  belong  to  the  noblest  classics  of 
religious  freedom,  Mr.  Gladstone  would  crowd  his  advice 
into  the  briefest  phrases.  "  Educate  the  people  !  Educate 
the  people  !  Only  enlightened  constituencies  vote  wisely  !  " 
And  when  some  fussy  committeeman  would  ask  :  * '  What 
shall  we  say  when  asked  about  the  forthcoming  Land  Bill 
and  the  Education  Bill  ? "  Mr.  Gladstone  would  answer  with 
manifest  impatience  :  "Tell  your  friends  that  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  redress  the  wrongs  of  seven  centuries  in  one  session 
of  Parliament." 

Mr.  Stead  has  spoken  of  Mr.  Gladstone  as  having  a 
"  Quixotic  conscience."  I  am  sure  that  he  impressed  that 
aspect  of  his  character  on  his  followers.  And  by  his  fol- 
lowers, I  am  not  speaking  of  his  followers  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  but  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Liberal  party,  among 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  215 

the  sturdy  workmen  and  middle  class  of  the  North  of  Eng- 
land— followers  by  thousands,  who  believed  in  the  perfect 
integrity,  the  political  sagacity  and  the  incorruptible  honor 
of  the  man  who  was  then  "the  People's  William,"  not  yet 
"the  Grand  Old  Man." 

Of  course  there  was  humor  as  well  as  earnestness  in  this 
campaign.  Soldiers  in  that  war  for  religious  equality  will 
remember  Tom  Grimshaw's  logic.  Tom  Grimshaw  was  a 
Bolton  man  with  a  clear  head  and  a  witty  tongue,  rough  of 
speech,  but  very  earnest  in  purpose.  He  reduced  the  whole 
Irish  Church  question  to  a  single  sentence.  There  were 
5,000  people  in  Bolton  Market  place,  a  large  wagon  served 
as  a  platform.  I  had  labored  somewhat  painfully  with  a 
most  indulgent  audience  for  the  space  of  half  an  hour.  I 
had  tried  to  argue  for  the  voluntary  maintenance  of  the 
churches  of  every  name.  Then  came  Tom  Grimshaw,  as 
burly  as  Longfellow's  blacksmith,  and  this  is  what  he  said: 

' '  Men  o'  Bowton,  there's  a  sight  too  much  talk.  The 
whole  business  lies  e'  a  nutshell.  Some  folks  likes  pigs, 
and  some  folks  likes  parsons  !  What  I  say  is,  let  them  as 
likes  pigs  and  parsons  feed  'em  ! "  This  brief  settlement  of 
the  Irish  Church  question  was  afterward  known  as  "Grim- 
shaw's logic." 

No  story  of  this  great  battle  would  be  complete  that  lost 
sight  of  the  hard  fighting  that  took  place  between  Mr. 
Disraeli  and  John  Bright.  Mr.  Disraeli  recognized  in  Mr. 
Bright  a  f  oeman  worthy  of  his  steel.  No  man  in  the  House 
of  Commons  had  more  respect  for  an  able  and  honorable 
antagonist  than  the  then  leader  of  her  Majesty's  opposition. 
As  the  conflict  deepened  these  doughty  warriors  measured 
swords.  The  question  of  the  appropriation  of  the  vast  sur- 
plus had  especial  charms  for  Mr.  Bright,  and  in  answering 
Mr.  Disraeli  he  had  opportunity  to  deal  with  this  matter, 
and  he  dealt  with  it  in  words  that  deserve  to  be  held  in  long 
and  proud  remembrance.  Mr.  Disraeli  had  been  contend- 


216  LIFE    OF   GLADSTONE. 

ing  that  this  church  of  the  minority,  this  church  that  had 
assumed  to  regard  itself  as  "The"  Church  of  Ireland,  this 
venerable  establishment  that  had  always  been  the  protector  of 
freedom  of  religion  and  of  toleration  ;  and  that  therefore, 
being  on  the  side  of  the  angels,  he  was  on  the  side  of  the 
establishment.  Mr.  Bright  denied  that  the  establishment 
had  been  the  protector  of  freedom,  or  religion,  or  toler- 
ation, and  in  his  own  quiet,  incisive  manner  remarked  that 
his  right  honorable  friend  seemed  to  read  a  different  history 
from  anybody  else,  or  possibly  he  made  his  own  history, 
and,  like  Voltaire,  made  it  better  without  facts  than  with 
them.  This,  of  course,  brought  down  the  House.  All 
along  the  ranks  of  the  Liberal  party  the  laughter  was  long 
and  loud. 

"  And  even  the  ranks  of  Tuscany 
Could  scarce  forbear  to  cheer." 

But  in  all  that  grand  battle  for  religious  equality  in 
Ireland  there  was  hardly  a  more  brilliant  passage  than  the 
closing  sentences  of  John  Bright's  speech  on  the  uses  to  be 
made  of  the  surplus  that  would  surely  follow  disendowment. 
"Do  you  think,"  he  said,  "it  will  be  a  misappropriation  of 
the  surplus  funds  of  this  great  establishment  to  apply  them 
to  some  objects  such  as  those  described  in  this  bill  ?  Do 
you  not  think  that  from  the  charitable  dealing  with  these 
matters  even  a  sweeter  incense  may  arise  than  when  these 
vast  funds  were  applied  to  maintain  three  times  the  number 
of  clergy  that  can  be  of  the  slightest  use  to  the  church  with 
which  they  are  connected  ?  We  can  do  but  little,  it  is  true. 
We  can  not  relume  the  extinguished  lamp  of  reason.  We 
can  not  make  the  deaf  to  hear.  We  can  not  make  the  dumb 

* 

to  speak.     It  is  not  given  to  us  : 

From  the  thick  film  to  purge  the  visual  ray, 
And  on  the  sightless  eyeballs  pour  the  day. 

"But  at  least  we  can  lessen  the  load  of  affliction,  and  we 
can  make  life  more  tolerable  to  vast  numbers  who  are  now 


PHCENIX  PARK,  DUBLIK. 


DISESTABLISHMENT   OF   THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  217 

suffering.  I  see  this  measure  giving  tranquility  to  our 
people,  greater  strength  to  the  realm,  and  adding  a  new 
lustre  and  a  new  dignity  to  the  crown.  I  dare  claim  for 
this  bill  the  support  of  all  good  and  thoughtful  people  within 
the  bounds  of  the  British  Empire,  and  I  can  not  doubt  that, 
in  its  early  and  great  results,  it  will  have  the  blessing  of  the 
Supreme,  for  I  believe  it  to  be  founded  on  those  principles 
of  justice  and  mercy  which  are  the  glorious  attributes  of 
His  eternal  reign." 

No  other  man  could  have  spoken  with  such  effect.  Other 
men  might  have  been  just  as  eloquent,  but  behind  this 
eloquence  stood  the  man,  whose  character  and  career  gave 
to  his  simplest  utterances  the  moral  force  that  made  his 
words  almost  irresistible. 

Mr.  Gladstone  fired  the  first  shot  of  this  great  battle  for 
Ecclesiastical  Equality  on  the  1st  of  March,  1869.  His 
speech,  in  introducing  his  Bill  for  the  Disestablishment  and 
Disendowment  of  the  Irish  Church,  lasted  three  hours,  and 
his  bitterest  opponent,  Benjamin  Disraeli,  said  there  was  not 
a  redundant  word  in  it.  Always  a  master  of  finance  Mr. 
Gladstone  nowhere,  except  perhaps  in  some  of  his  famous 
budgets,  revealed  his  complete  mastery  of  that  intricate 
science  more  effectively  than  in  his  wonderful  manipulation 
of  those  vast  sums  involved  in  the  disendowment  of  the 
Irish  Church.  After  meeting  generously  all  possible  claims, 
the  question  of  the  distribution  of  the  surplus  became  of 
grave  importance.  We  rest  on  the  authority  of  Mr.  G. 
Barnett  Smith  for  the  statement  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  scheme 
of  distribution. 

The  tithe  rent  charge  would  yield  $45,000,000;  lands  and 
perpetuity  rents,  $31,250,000;  money, -$3,750,000— total, 
$80,000,000;  the  present  value  of  the  property  of  the  Irish 
Church.  Of  this,  the  bill  would  dispose  of  $43,250,000, 
viz.,  vested  interests  of  incumbents,  $24,500,000;  curates, 
$4,000,000;  lay  compensation,  $4,500,000;  private  endow- 


218  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

ments,  $2,500,000;  building  charges,  $1,250,000;  commu- 
tation of  the  Maynooth  Grant  and  the  Begium  Donum, 
$5,500,000,  and  expenses  of  the  commission,  $1,000,000. 

Consequently,  there  would  remain  a  surplus  of  between 
$35,000,000  and  $40,000,000;  and  the  question  arose,  said 
the  Premier,  amid  considerable  excitement,  ; '  What  shall  we 
do  with  it  ?  "  He  held  it  to  be  indispensable,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, that  the  purposes  to  which  the  surplus  would  be 
applied  should  be  Irish.  Further,  they  should  not  be  relig- 
ious, although  they  must  be  final,  and  open  the  door  to  no 
new  controversy.  After  discussing  various  suggestions, 
some  of  which  he  dismissed  as  impossible,  and  others  as 
radically  wrong,  the  speaker  announced,  quoting  the  pre- 
amble of  the  bill,  that  the  Government  had  concluded  to 
apply  the  surplus  to  the  relief  of  unavoidable  calamities  and 
suffering,  not  provided  for  by  the  Poor  Law.  The  sum  of 
$925,000  would  be  allocated  for  lunatic  asylums;  $100,000 
a  year  would  be  awarded  to  idiot  asylums;  $115,000  to 
training  schools  for  the  deaf,  dumb  and  blind;  $75,000  for 
the  training  of  nurses;  $50,000  for  reformatories,  and 
$225,000  to  county  infirmaries — in  all  $1,555,000  a  year. 
Mr.  Gladstone  claimed  that  by  the  provision  of  all  these 
requirements  they  would  be  able  to  combine  very  great  re- 
forms; and  they  would  also  be  in  a  better  condition  for  in- 
viting the  Irish  landlord  to  accede  to  a  change  in  the  county- 
cess,  as  they  were  able  to  offer  by  this  plan  a  considerable 
diminution  in  its  burden.  The  plan  for  disposing  of  the 
residue  he  believed  to  be  a  good  and  solid  plan,  full  of  pub- 
lic advantage.  After  touching  upon  possible  errors  in  his 
statement,  and  announcing  that  he  should  be  happy  to  wel- 
come suggestions  from  any  quarter,  Mr.  Gladstone  referred 
to  the  great  transition  which  the  Government  were  asking 
the  clergymen  of  the  Church  of  Ireland  to  undergo,  and  to 
the  privileges  which  the  laity  were  called  upon  to  debate. 
He  concluded  with  the  following  glowing  peroration  : 


DISESTABLISHMENT    OF    THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  219 

"I  do  not  know  in  what  country  so  great  a  change,  so  great  a 
transition  has  been  proposed  for  the  ministers  of  a  religious  com- 
munion, who  have  enjoyed  for  many  ages  the  preferred  position  of  an 
Established  Church.  I  can  well  understand  that  to  many  in  the  Irish 
Establishment  such  a  change  appears  to  be  nothing  less  than  ruin 
and  destruction.  From  the  height  on  which  they  now  stand  the  future 
is  to  them  an  abyss,  and  their  fears  recall  the  words  used  in  King 
Lear,  when  Edgar  endeavors  to  persuade  Gloster  that  he  has  fallen 
over  the  cliffs  of  Dover,  and  says: 

Ten  masts  at  each,  make  not  the  altitude 
Which  thou  has  perpendicularly  fallen. 
Thy  life's  a  miracle  ! 

And  yet  but  a  little  while  after  the  old  man  is  relieved  from  his  de- 
lusion, and  finds  that  he  has  not  fallen  at  all.  So  I  trust  that  when, 
instead  of  the  fictitious  and  adventitious  aid  on  which  we  have  too 
long  taught  the  Irish  Establishment  to  lean,  it  should  come  to  place 
its  trust  in  its  own  resources,  in  its  own  great  mission,  in  all  that  it 
can  draw  from  the  energy  of  its  ministers  and  its  members,  and  the 
high  hopes  and  promises  of  the  gospel  that  it  teaches,  it  will  find  that 
it  has  entered  upon  a  new  era  of  existence — an  era  bright  with  hope 
and  potent  for  good.  At  any  rate,  I  think  the  day  has  certainly 
come  when  an  end  is  finally  to  be  put  to  that  union,  not  between  the 
Church  and  religious  association,  but  between  the  Establishment  and 
the  State,  which  was  commenced  under  circumstances  little  auspicious, 
and  has  endured  to  be  a  source  of  unhappiness  to  Ireland,  and  of  dis- 
credit and  scandal  to  England.  There  is  more  to  say.  This  measure 
is  in  every  sense  a  great  measure — great  in  its  principles,  great  in  the 
multitude  of  its  dry,  technical,  but  interesting  detail,  and  great  as  a 
testing  measure;  for  it  will  show  for  one  and  all  of  us  of  what  metal 
we  are  made.  Upon  us  all  it  brings  a  great  responsibility — great  and 
foremost  upon  those  who  occupy  this  bench.  We  are  especially 
chargable,  nay,  deeply  guilty,  if  we  have  either  dishonestly,  as  some 
think,  or  even  prematurely  or  unwisely  challenged  so  gigantic  an 
issue.  I  know  well  the  punishments  that  follow  rashness  in  public 
affairs,  and  that  ought  to  fall  upon  those  men,  those  Phastons  of  poli- 
tics, who,  with  hands  unequal  to  the  task,  attempt  to  guide  the 
chariot  of  the  sun.  But  the  responsibility,  though  heavy,  does  not 
exclusively  press  upon  us;  it  presses  upon  every  man  who  has  to  take 
part  in  the  discussion  and  decision  upon  this  bill.  Every  man  ap- 
proaches the  discussion  under  the  most  solemn  obligations  to  raise 
the  level  of  his  vision  and  expand  its  scope  in  proportion  with  the 
greatness  of  the  matter  in  hand.  The  working  of  our  constitutional 
government  itself  is  upon  its  trial,  for  I  do  not  believe  there  ever  was 
a  time  when  the  wheels  of  legislative  machinery  were  set  in  motion 
under  conditions  of  peace  and  order  and  constitutional  regularity  to 


220  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

deal  with  a  question  greater  or  more  profound.  And  more  especially, 
sir,  is  the  credit  and  fame  of  this  great  Assembly  involved;  this  As- 
sembly, which  has  inherited  through  many  ages  the  accumulated 
honors  of  brilliant  triumphs,  of  peaceful  but  courageous  legislation, 
is  now  called  upon  to  address  itself  to  a  task  which  would,  ID  deed, 
have  demanded  all  the  best  energies  of  the  very  best  among  your 
fathers  and  your  ancestors.  I  believe  it  will  prove  to  be  worthy  of 
the  task.  Should  it  fail,  even  the  fame  of  the  House  of  Commons  will 
suffer  disparagement;  should  it  succeed,  even  that  fame,  I  venture  to 
say,  will  receive  no  small,  no  insensible  addition.  I  must  not  ask 
gentlemen  opposite  to  concur  in  this  view,  emboldened  as  I  am  by  the 
kindness  they  have  shown  me  in  listening  with  patience  to  a  state- 
ment which  could  not  have  been  other  than  tedious;  but  I  pray  them 
to  bear  with  me  for  a  moment  while,  for  myself  and  my  colleagues,  I 
say  we  are  sanguine  of  the  issue.  We  believe,  and  for  my  part  I  am 
deeply  convinced,  that  when  the  final  consummation  shall  arrive,  and 
when  the  words  are  spoken  that  shall  give  the  force  of  law  to  the 
work  embodied  in  this  measure— the  work  of  peace  and  justice — those 
words  will  be  echoed  upon  every  shore  where  the  name  of  Ireland  or 
the  name  of  Great  Britain  has  been  heard,  and  the  answer  to  them 
will  come  back  in  the  approving  verdict  of  civilized  mankind." 

Commenting  on  this  great  speech  the  Daily  Telegraph, 
then  under  the  guiding  hand  of  Edwin  Arnold,  says  : 

"The  night  was  a  night  never  to  be  forgotten.  We  shall  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  Mr.  Gladstone  never  before,  amidst  all  the  tri- 
umphs that  mark  2iis  long  course  of  honor  and  success,  displayed 
more  vigorous  grasp  of  his  subject,  more  luminous  clearness  in  its 
development,  earnestness  more  lofty,  or  eloquence  more  appropriate 
and  refined,  than  in  the  memorable  deliverance  of  last  evening.  Less 
than  the  most  complete  mastery  of  the  complex  scheme,  from  its 
mightiest  principle  to  its  minutest  item,  would  have  brought  down 
that  remarkable  exhibition  of  intellect  from  the  high  level  of  an  histori- 
cal oration  to  a  cold  and  weary  evolution  of  clauses  and  calculations. 
But  with  that  consummate  skill  which  in  old  days  made  a  fine  art  of 
finance,  and  taught  us  all  the  romance  of  the  revenue,  Mr.  Gladstone 
made  his  statistics  ornamental,  and  deftly  wove  the  stiff est  strings 
of  figures  into  the  web  of  his  exposition.  Scarcely  even  so  much  as 
glancing  at  his  notes,  he  advanced  with  an  oratorical  step,  which 
positively  never  once  faltered  from  exordium  to  peroration  of  his 
amazing  task;  omitting  nothing,  slurring  nothing,  confusing  nothing; 
but  pouring  from  his  prodigious  faculty  of  thought,  memory,  and 
speech  an  explanation  so  lucid  that  none  of  all  the  many  points 
which  he  made  was  obscure  to  any  of  his  listeners  when  he  had  fin- 
ished. And,  charged  as  the  speech  necessarily  was  with  hard  and 


DISESTABLISHMENT   OF   THE    IRISH    CHURCH.  22  J 

stern  matter  of  fact  and  figure,  the  intense  earnestness,  the  sincere 
satisfaction  of  the  speaker,  at  the  act  of  concord  and  justice  he  was 
inaugurating,  gave  such  elasticity,  and  play  to  his  genius,  that 
nowhere  was  the  clause  so  dry  or  the  calculation  so  involved,  but 
some  gentle  phrase  of  respect,  some  high  invocation  of  principle, 
some  bright  illumination  of  the  theme  from  actual  life,  some  graceful 
compliment  to  his  hearers,  lightened  the  passage  of  these  mountains 
of  statistics,  and  kept  the  House  spell-bound  by  that  rich  and  ener- 
getic voice.  This  phrase  may  seem  extravagant;  but  though  Mr. 
Gladstone  has  done  many  things  of  marvellous  intellectual  and 
oratorical  force,  his  explosion  last  evening  of  the  measure  from  which 
will  assuredly  date  the  pacification  and  happiness  of  Ireland,  was  a 
Parliamentary  achievement  unparalleled  even  by  himself. 

The  long  debate  that  followed  jn  the  introduction  of  the 
Bill  was  one  of  the  most  illustrious  in  the  annals  of  the 
British  House  of  Commons.  It  was  manifest  that  the 
House  and  the  country  at  large  were  with  the  great  leader. 

On  the  motion  for  a  second  reading  of  the  Bill  the  votes 
ran,  for  the  second  reading  368,  against,  250 — majority 
118.  Of  course  there  was  a  long  and  bitter  fight.  In  the 
House  of  Lords  the  conflict  was  waged  with  intense  vigor. 
The  Bishops  especially  did  valiant  service  on  behalf  of  the 
Church.  The  Bill  eventually  passed  the  Lords  by  121  to 
114.  Thus  passed  one  of  the  most  remarkable  measures  of 
Victoria's  reign. 

A  brief  but  glowing  paragraph  from  Mr.  Gladstone  on 
the  whole  question  will  fitly  close  this  chapter. 

* '  The  Church  may  have  much  to  regret  in  respect  to 
temporal  splendor,  yet  the  day  is  to  come  when  it  will  be 
said  of  her,  as  of  the  temple  of  Jerusalem,  'that  the  glory 
of  the  latter  house  is  greater  than  of  the  former; '  and  when 
the  most  loyal  and  faithful  of  her  children  will  learn  not  to 
forget  that  at  length  the  Parliament  of  England  took  cour- 
age, and  the  Irish  Church  was  disestablished  and  disendowed. " 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL    PROGRESS. 

Good  Knight !     No  soil  of  wrong-  thy  spotless  shield  might  stain; 

Thy  keen  sword  served  thee  long  and  not  in  vain. 
Oh,  high  impetuous  soul,  that  mounting  to  the  light, 

Spurned  the  dull  world's  control  to  gain  the  right !  " 

— Lewis  Morrison. 

A  country  is  in  a  good  and  sound  and  healthy  state  when  it  ex- 
hibits the  spirit  of  progress  in  all  its  institutions  and  in  all  its  oper- 
ations; and  when  with  that  spirit  of  progress  it  combines  the  spirit 
of  affectionate  retrospect  upon  the  times  and  the  generations  that 
have  gone  before,  and  the  determination  to  husband  and  to  turn  at 
every  point  to  the  best  account,  all  that  these  previous  generations 
have  accumulated  of  what  is  good  and  worthy  for  the  benefit  of  us 
their  children.  — W.  E.  Gladstone. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  Reform  Bill  had  been  defeated,  but  he 
was  not  defeated,  nor  were  the  principles  for  which  he  so 
bravely  fought  to  be  buried  in  oblivion.  The  nation  was 
thoroughly  aroused.  Reform  demonstrations  were  held  all 
over  the  country.  With  singular  suicidal  folly  meetings  in 
Hyde  Park  were  prohibited.  Mr.  Bright  in  his  trenchant 
manner  asked :  "  If  a  public  meeting  in  a  public  park  is 
denied  you,  and  if  millions  of  intelligent  and  honest  men  are 
denied  the  franchise,  on  what  foundation  do  our  liberties 
rest,  or  is  there  in  this  country  any  liberty  but  the  tolera- 
tion of  the  ruling  class  ? "  When  the  police  by  the  order  of 
the  government  repulsed  the  procession  that  had  marched 
in  quiet  order  up  to  the  Marble  Arch,  a  riot  ensued,  the 
mob  tore  down  the  railings  and  entered  the  park.  There 
was  a  good  deal  of  free  fighting,  but  no  very  serious  dam- 
age was  done.  A  body  of  Life  Guards  appeared  upon  the 

222 


YEARS   OF   WONDERFUL   PROGRESS.  223 

scene,  and  the  riot  was  quelled.  Meantime  an  enormous 
meeting  was  held  in  Trafalgar  Square,  where  resolutions 
in  favor  of  Reform  and  of  gratitude  to  Mr.  Gladstone  and 
Mr.  Bright,  were  carried  with  the  wildest  enthusiasm,, 
Early  in  August  a  meeting  was  held  at  Brookfield,  near  Bir- 
mingham, at  which  it  was  estimated  that  not  less  than 
250,000  were  present.  "Agitate!  agitate!  agitate!" 
was  John  Bright's  advice,  and  with  the  advice  came  the 
assurance  '  'that  no  Government,  however  strong,  could  long 
withstand  the  ascertained  desire  of  an  intelligent  and  de- 
termined people. "  It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  at  length 
on  any  discussion  of  that  remarkable  episode  of  English 
history  in  which  Mr.  Disraeli  "educated  his  party, "  brought 
in  his  Reform  Bill,  and  so,  as  he  gracefully  described  it, 
"dished  the  Whigs." 

Passing  under  the  shadow  of  his  monument  in  Westmin- 
ster Abbey,  one  may  be  forgiven  if  it  should  be  suggested 
to  the  mind,  that  the  three  great  things  that  made  him 
famous  were,  that  he  made  the  Queen  Empress  of  India,  he 
"educated  his  party,"  and  he  "dished  the  Whigs!"  On 
the  25th  of  February,  1868,  it  was  announced  in  both 
Houses  of  Parliament  that  Lord  Derby,  through  failing 
health,  had  resigned  the  Premiership,  and  that  the  Queen 
had  entrusted  Mr.  Disraeli  with  the  task  of  forming  a  new 
administration.  Thus  the  "  Asian  mystery  "  had  reached 
the  highest  place,  and  became  Prime  Minister  of  England. 
Lord  Chelmsf ord  in  a  merry  mood  said,  referring  to  the 
two  great  English  horse  races  the  "Derby"  and  the 
"Oaks,"  "The  old  government  was  the  Derby;  this  will 
be  the  Hoax. " 

While  on  the  whole  the  Press  spoke  kindly  and  in  con- 
gratulatory terms  of  Mr.  Disraeli's  accession  to  power,  yet 
he  had  to  bear  a  good  deal  of  raillery  and  sarcasm.  Of  this 
he  could  hardly  complain,  for  he  had  set  the  example  of 
the  merciless  and  unreasonable  satire.  One  criti; 


224  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"There  was  of  course  but  one  possible  Conservative  Pre- 
mier, Mr.  Disraeli — he  who  had  served  the  Conservative 
party  for  more  than  twenty  years,  who  had  led  it  to  victory, 
and  who  had  long  been  the  ruling  spirit  of  the  Cabinet.  To 
have  reconstructed  the  Ministry  without  Vivian  Grey  as  its 
chief,  would  have  been  to  enact  in  politics  a  well-known 
play  under  proverbial  disadvantages. " 

As  Silas  Wegg  "dropped  into  poetry,"  so  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette  dropped  into  Scripture,  in  the  following  caustic 
manner  : 

"One  of  the  most  grevious  and  constant  puzzles  of  King 
David  was  the  prosperity  of  the  wicked  and  the  scornful ; 
and  the  same  tremendous  moral  enigma  has  come  down  to 
our  own  days.  In  this  respect,  the  earth  is  in  its  older 
times  what  it  was  in  its  youth.  Even  so  recently  as  last 
week  the  riddle  once  more  presented  itself  in  its  most 
impressive  shape.  Like  the  Psalmist,  the  Liberal  leader 
may  well  protest  that  verily  he  has  cleansed  his  heart  in 
vain  and  washed  his  hands  in  innocency.  All  day  long  he  has 
been  plagued  by  Whig  lords,  and  chastened  every  morning 
by  Radical  manufacturers.  As  blamelessly  as  any  curate  he 
has  written  about  Ecce  Ho/mo,  and  he  has  never  made  a 
speech,  even  in  the  smallest  country  town,  without  calling 
out  with  David,  '  How  foolish  am  I,  and  how  ignorant !'  For 
all  this,  what  does  he  see  ?  The  scorner  who  shot  out  the 
lip  and  shook  the  head  at  him  across  the  table  of  the  House 
of  Commons  last  session,  has  now  more  than  heart  could 
wish;  his  eyes,  speaking  in  an  Oriental  manner,  stand  out 
with  fatness,  he  speaketh  loftily,  and  pride  compasseth  him 
about  as  with  a  chain.  .  .  .  That  the  writer  of  frivol- 
ous stories  about  Vivian  Grey  and  Coningsby  should  grasp 
the  sceptre  before  the  writer  of  beautiful  and  serious  things 
about  Ecce  Homo — the  man  who  is  epigramatic,  flashy, 
arrogant,  before  the  man  who  never  perpetrated  an  epigram 
in  his  life,  is  always  fervid,  and  would  as  soon  die  as  admit 


LORD  HARTINGTON:    DUKE  OF  DEVONSHIRE. 
.SUCCESSOR  OF  MK    GLADSTONE  AS  LEADER  OF  THE  LIBERAL  PARTY. 


YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL    PROGRESS.  225 

I 

that  he  had  a  shade  more  brain  than  his  footman — the  Radi- 
cal corrupted  into  a  Tory  before  the  Tory  purified  and 
elevated  into  a  Radical.  Is  not  this  enough  to  make  an  hon- 
est man  rend  his  mantle,  and  shave  his  head  and  sit  down 
among  the  ashes  inconsolable  ?  Let  us  play  the  too  under- 
rated part  of  Bildad  the  Shuhite  for  a  space,  while  our 
chiefs  thus  have  unwelcome  leisure  to  scrape  themselves 
with  pots  herts,  and  to  meditate  upon  the  evil  way  of  the 
world. " 

In  the  election  of  1868  the  Liberals  were  successful  far 
beyond  their  own  anticipations.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  in 
southwest  Lancashire.  The  old  antagonistic  forces  were 
against  him.  Mr.  Cross  and  Mr.  Turner  beat  him  by  a 
majority  of  three  hundred.  The  possibility  of  this  defeat 
had  been  anticipated.  The  electors  of  Greenwich,  without 
Mr.  Gladstone's  solicitation,  put  him  in  nomination  and 
elected  him,  without  even  an  address,  along  with  Mr. 
Alderman  Salomons,  a  pronounced  Liberal.  The  election 
proved  that  the  country  was  with  Mr.  Gladstone  and  the 
Liberal  cause.  In  the  large  cities  the  conservatives  were 
completely  routed,  but  in  the  counties  they  held  their  own. 
Scotland  and  Ireland  both  gave  very  substantial  majorities 
for  the  Liberals. 

Mr.  Disraeli  did  not  wait  to  meet  the  new  Parliament, 
but  resigned,  promising,  however,  to  fight  the  Disestablish- 
ment of  the  Irish  Church. 

On  the  4th  of  December,  1868,  the  Queen  sent  for  Mr- 
Gladstone  and  gave  him  instructions  to  form  a  ministry. 
On  the  9th  of  the  month  he  was  able  to  announce  the  first 
great  Liberal  cabinet: 

Prime  Minister — W.  E.  Gladstone. 

Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs — Lord  Clarendon. 

Secretary  for  the  Colonies — Lord  Grenville. 

Home  Secretary — Mr.  Bruce. 

Secretary  of  War — Mr.  Cardwell. 


226  LIFE    OF   GLADSTONE. 

Secretary  for  India — Duke  of  Argyle. 
Lord  Chancellor — Lord  Hetherly. 
Lord  Privy  Seal — Earl  Kimberley. 
First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty — Mr.  Childers. 
Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland — Earl  Spencer. 
Postmaster-General — Lord  Hartington. 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer — Mr.  Robert  Lowe. 
President  of  the  Board  of  Trade — Mr.  John  Bright. 

Of  the  great  measure  of  the  Disestablishment  and  Disen- 
dowment  of  the  Irish  Church,  reference  has  been  made  in  a 
previous  reminiscent  chapter.  It  is  remarkable  to  what  an 
extent  men  who  had  been  his  sincere  admirers  up  to  that 
point,  fell  away  from  him.  They  could  not  understand  the 
position  he  took;  he,  the  old-time  champion  of  the  Church, 
now  seeks,  as  they  believed,  its  destruction.  They  surely 
could  not  have  carefully  considered  these  grand  works,  in 
which  he  so  lucidly  expounded  and  explained  his  position: 

"There  are  many  who  think  that  to  lay  hands  upon  the  national 
Church  Establishment  of  a  country  is  a  profane  and  unhallowed  act. 
I  respect  that  feeling.  I  sympathize  with  it.  I  sympathize  with  it 
while  I  think  it  my  duty  to  overcome  and  repress  it.  But  if  it  be  an 
error,  it  is  an  error  entitled  to  respect.  There  is  something  in  the 
idea  of  a  national  establishment  of  religion,  of  a  solemn  appropria- 
tion of  a  part  of  the  Commonwealth,  for  conferring  upon  all  who  are 
ready  to  receive  it  what  we  know  to  be  an  inestimable  benefit;  of  sav- 
ing that  portion  of  the  inheritance  from  private  selfishness,  in  order 
to  extract  from  it,  if  we  can,  pure  and  unmixed  advantages  of  the 
highest  order  for  the  population  at  large.  There  is  something  in  this 
so  attractive  that  it  is  an  image  that  must  always  command  the  hom- 
age of  the  many.  It  is  somewhat  like  the  kingly  ghost  in  Hamlet,  of 
which  one  of  the  characters  of  Shakspeare  says: — 

We  do  it  wrong,  being  so  majestical, 
To  offer  it  the  show  of  violence ; 
For  it  is,  as  the  air,  invulnerable. 
And  our  vain  blows  malicious  mockery. 

But,  sir,  this  is  to  view  a  religious  establishment  upon  one  side,  only 
upon  what  I  may  call  the  eternal  side.  It  has  likewise  aside  of  earth; 
and  here  I  cannot  do  better  than  quote  some  lines  written  by  the  pres- 


YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL   PROGRESS.  227 

ent  Archbishop  of  Dublin,  at  a  time  when  his  genius  was  devoted  to 
the  muses.  He  said,  in  speaking-  of  mankind: — 

''  We  who  did  our  lineage  high 
Draw  from  beyond  the  starry  sky, 
And  yet  upon  the  other  side, 
To  earth  and  to  its  dust  allied." 

And  so  the  Church  Establishment,  regarded  in  its  theory  and  in  its 
aim,  is  beautiful  and  attractive.  Yet  what  is  it  bnt  an  appropriation 
of  public  property,  an  appropriation  of  the  fruits  of  labor  and  of  skill 
to  certain  purposes,  and  unless  these  purposes  are  fulfilled,  that  ap- 
propriation cannot  be  justified.  Therefore,  sir,  I  cannot  but  feel  that 
we  must  set  aside  fears  which  thrust  themselves  upon  the  imagina- 
tion, and  act  upon  the  sober  dictates  of  our  judgment.  I  think  it  has 
been  shown  that  the  cause  for  action  is  strong — not  for  precipitate 
action,  not  for  action  beyond  our  powers,  but  for  such  action  as  the 
opportunities  of  the  times  and  the.  condition  of  Parliament,  if  there 
be  but  a  ready  will,  will  amply  and  easily  admit  of.  If  I  am  asked  as 
to  my  expectations  of  the  issue  of  this  struggle,  I  begin  by  frankly 
avowing  that  I,  for  one,  would  not  have  entered  into  it,  unless  I  be- 
lieved that  the  final  hour  was  about  to  sound — 

"Venit  summa  dies  et  ineluctabile  fatum.'l 

The  issue  is  not  in  our  hands.  What  we  had  and  have  to  do  is  to 
consider  well  and  deeply  before  we  take  the  first  step  in  an  engage- 
ment such  as  this;  but  having  enterered  into  the  controversy,  there 
and  then  to  acquit  ourselves  like  men,  and  to  use  every  effort  to  re- 
move what  still  remains  of  the  scandals  and  calamities  in  the  rela- 
tions which  exist  between  England  and  Ireland,  and  to  make  our 
best  efforts  at  least  to  fill  up  with  the  cement  of  human  concord  the 
noble  fabric  of  the  British  Empire." 

On  the  15th  of  February,  1870,  Mr.  Gladstone  brought 
forward  the  Irish  Land  Bill.  The  House  was  crowded  with 
members  and  the  gallaries  were  thronged  with  distinguished 
strangers.  In  the  outset,  Mr.  Gladstone  alluded  to  the  pre- 
dictions of  the  opponents  of  the  Irish  Church  Bill  twelve 
months  before,  that  it  was  the  land  and  not  the  Church 
which  lay  at  the  root  of  Irish  grievances.  He  therefore 
trusted  that  the  Opposition  would  approach  the  question 
with  a  duo  sense  of  its  importance.  The  necessity  for  clos- 
ing and  sealing  up  the  controversy  was  admitted  by  all  fair- 
minded  and  moderate  men  on  both  sides. 


228  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

The  position  of  the  Irish  occupier  under  the  existing  land 
system  Mr.  Gladstone  declared  to  be  no  better  than  it  had 
been  before  the  repeal  of  the  Penal  Laws.  In  certain  coun- 
ties of  Ulster,  there  was  a  traditional  custom  which  secured 
to  the  tenant  fixity  of  tenure  so  long  as  he  paid  his  rents, 
and  a  property  or  tenant  right  in  his  holding  in  virtue  of 
the  improvements  which  he  and  his  predecessors  in  title 
had  affected  thereon — a  tenant-right  which  he  could  sell. 
Throughout  the  rest  of  Ireland  the  tenants  were  in  the  main 
tenants-at-will,  their  property  and  themselves  at  the  mercy 
of  landlords  and  their  agents,  an  evil  condition  which  re- 
acted upon  both  tenants  and  landlords,  and  produced  results 
of  barbarism  and  cruelty,  not  matched  in  any  country  pre- 
tending to  be  civilized.  Mr.  Gladstone's  Bill  legalized  the 
Ulster  Customs,  and  sought  to  extend  its  benefits  to  the  rest 
of  Ireland.  But  Mr.  Gladstone  shall  tell  in  his  own  majestic 
way  the  moral  and  social  ends  he  hoped  to  attain. 

"If  lam  asked, ''he  said  "what  I  hope  to  effect  by  this  bill,  I  certain- 
ly hope  we  shall  effect  a  great  change  in  Ireland;  but  I  hope  also,  and 
confidently  believe,  that  this  change  will  be  accomplished  by  gentle 
means.  Every  line  of  the  measure  has  been  studied  with  the  keenest 
desire  that  it  shall  import  as  little  as  possible  of  shock  or  violent  al- 
teration into  any  single  arrangement  now  existing  between  landlord 
and  tenant  in  Ireland.  There  is,  no  doubt,  much  to  be  undone;  there 
is,  no  doubt,  much  to  be  improved;  but  what  we  desire  is  that  the 
work  of  this  bill  should  be  like  the  work  of  Nature  herself,  when  on 
face  of  a  desolated  land  she  restores  what  has  been  laid  waste  by  the 
wild  and  savage  hand  of  man.  Its  operations,  we  believe,  will  be 
quiet  and  gradual.  We  wish  to  alarm  none;  we  wish  to  injure  no  one. 
What  we  wish  is  that  where  there  has  been  despondency,  there  shall 
be  hope;  where  there  has  been  mistrust,  there  shall  b3  confidence; 
where  there  has  been  alienation  and  hate,  there  shall,  however  grad- 
ually, be  woven  the  ties  of  a  strong  attachment  between  man  and 
man.  This  we  know  cannot  be  done  in  a  day.  The  measure  has  ref- 
erence to  evils  which  has  long  been  at  work;  their  roots  strike  back 
into  bygone  centuries;  and  it  is  against  the  ordinance  of  Providence, 
as  it  is  against  the  interest  of  man,  that  immediate  reparation  should 
n  such  cases  be  possible;  for  one  of  the  main  restraints  of  misdoing 
would  be  removed,  if  the  consequences  of  misdoing  could  in  a  moment 
receive  a  remedy.  For  such  reparation  and  such  effects  it  is  that  we  look 


YEARS   OF   WONDERFUL   PROGEESS.  229 

from  this  bill;  and  we  reckon  on  them  not  less  surely  and  not  less  con- 
fidently because  we  know  they  must  be  gradual  and  slow;  and  be- 
cause we  are  likewise  aware  that  if  it  be  poisoned  by  the  malignant 
agency  of  angry  or  of  bitter  passions,  it  cannot  do  its  proper  work. 
In  order  that  there  may  be  a  hope  of  its  entire  success,  it  must  be 
passed — not  as  a  triumph  of  party  over  party,  or  class  over  class;  not 
as  the  lifting  up  of  an  ensign  to  record  the  downfall  of  that  which  has 
once  been  great  and  powerful — but  as  a  common  work  of  common 
love  and  goodwill  to  the  common  good  of  our  common  country.  With 
such  objects  and  in  such  a  spirit  as  that,  this  House  will  address  itself 
to  the  work,  and  sustain  the  feeble  efforts  of  the  Government.  And 
my  hope,  at  least,  is  high  and  ardent  that  we  shall  live  to  see  our 
work  prosper  in  our  hand,  and  that  in  that  Ireland,  which  we  desire 
to  unite  to  England  and  Scotland  by  the  only  enduring  ties — those  of 
free-will  and  free  affection — peace,  order,  and  a  settled  and  cheerful 
industry  will  diffuse  their  blessings  from  year  to  year,  and  from  day 
to  day,  over  a  smiling  land."  ' 

The  history  of  the  bill  is  almost  amusing.  Not  less  than 
three  hundred  amendments  were  offered  to  it.  But  the  liberal 
power  was  dominant.  On  the  30th  of  May,  1870,  the  bill 
passed  the  House  of  Commons.  On  the  second  of  June  it 
passed  the  Lords,  and  on  August  1st,  received  the  royal  assent. 

In  the  same  Session  another  important  Liberal  Measure, 
Mr.  Forster's  Education  Bill  was  introduced  by  the  Gov- 
ernment providing  for  Elementary  Education  in  England 
and  Wales.  The  measure  was  based  on  the  principle  of 
direct  compulsion  as  regarded  the  attendance  of  children, 
and  to  effect  this,  power  was  to  be  given  to  each  school 
board  to  frame  by-laws  compelling  the  attendance  at  school 
of  all  children  from  five  to  twelve  years  of  age  within  their 
districts. 

The  Government  having  shown  a  decided  agreement  on 
some  points  with  the  members  of  the  Opposition,  Mr.  Rich- 
ards charged  the  Premier  with  having  thrown  the  Noncon- 
formists overboard.  Mr.  Forster  became  extremely  un- 
popular for  a  time  with  the  latter  body,  and  he  was 
described  by  Mr.  Richards  as  "mounting  the  good  steed 
Conservative,  and  charging  into  the  ranks  of  his  friends  and 
riding  them  down  roughshod." 


230  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

On  the  order  for  the  third  reading,  Mr.  Dixon  and  Mr. 
Miall,  speaking  on  behalf  of  the  Nonconformists,  denounced 
the  measure,  and  attacked  the  Government  for  having  roused 
the  suspicion  and  distrust  of  their  own  supporters,  while 
they  had  secured  the  aid  of  the  Opposition. 

Mr.  Miall  said  that  the  Premier  had  led  one  section  of 
the  Liberal  party  through  the  Valley  of-  Humiliation  ;  but 
"once  bit,  twice  shy,"  he  continued,  "and  we  can't  stand 
this  sort  of  a  thing  much  longer. "  Mr.  Gladstone  was  roused 
by  this  speech,  and  a  sharp  passage  of  arms  occurred. 

"I  hope,"  said  the  Premier,  replying  to  Mr.  Miall, 
"that  my  honorable  friend  will  not  continue  his  support  to 
the  Government  one  moment  longer  than  he  deems  it  con- 
sistent with  his  sense  of  duty  and  right.  For  God's  sake, 
sir,  let  him  withdraw  it  the  moment  he  thinks  it  better  for 
the  cause  he  has  at  heart  that  he  should  do  so.  So  long  as 
my  honorable  friend  thinks  fit  to  give  us  his  support  we 
will  co-operate  with  my  honorable  friend  for  every  purpose 
we  have  in  common ;  but  when  we  think  his  opinions  and 
demands  exacting,  when  we  think  he  looks  too  much  to  the 
section  of  the  community  he  adorns,  and  too  little  to  the  in- 
terests of  the  people  at  large,  we  must  then  recollect  that 
we  are  the  Government  of  the  Queen,  and  that  those  who 
have  assumed  the  high  responsibility  of  administering  the 
affairs  of  this  Empire,  must  endeavor  to  forget  the  parts  in 
the  whole,  and  must,  in  the  great  measures  they  introduce 
into  the  House,  propose  to  themselves  no  meaner  or  narrower 
object — no  other  object  than  the  welfare  of  the  Empire  at 
large.  This  second  important  measure  of  a  memorable  ses- 
sion eventually  passed  both  Houses  and  became  a  law. 

In  July,  1870,  war  broke  out  between  France  and 
Prussia.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  pressed  hard  by  Bismarck  and 
by  other  thoughtless  and  unprincipled  men  at  home  to  take 
sides,  but  he  did  himself  the  honor  and  his  country  and  age 
the  grand  service  of  maintaining  a  strict  neutrality.  This 


YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL    PROGRESS.  231 

was  the  Golden  Age  of  Liberalism.  Mr.  Justin  McCarthy 
speaking  of  these  times  and  of  the  wonderful  advance  of 
just  and  liberal  legislations  says: 

"Nothing  in  modern  English  history  is  like  the  rush  of 
the  extraordinary  years  of  reforming  energy  on  which  the 
new  Administration  had  now  entered.  Mr.  Gladstone's 
Government  had  to  grapple  with  five  or  six  great  questions, 
any  one  of  which  might  have  seemed  enough  to  engage  the 
whole  attention  of  an  ordinary  Administration.  The  new 
Prime  Minister  had  pledged  himself  to  abolish  the  State 
Church  in  Ireland  and  to  reform  the  Irish  Land  Tenure 
system.  He  had  made  up  his  mind  to  put  an  end  to  the 
purchase  of  commissions  in  the  army.  Recent  events  and 
experiences  had  convinced  him  that  it  was  necessary  to  in- 
troduce the  system  of  voting  by  ballot.  He  accepted  for 
his  Government  the  responsibility  of  orignating  a  complete 
system  of  National  Education." 

The  Dissenters'  Burials  Bill  was  brought  forward  by  Sir 
Morton  Peto.  On  the  second  reading  of  the  Bill,  Mr. 
Gladstone  proved  his  broad  and  generous  sympathy  with 
that  spirit  of  toleration  which  was  rapidly  winning  its  way 
with  all  sincere,  thoughtful  minds,  by  the  following  im- 
pressive words:  "He  said  he  could  not  refuse  his  consent 
to  the  second  reading  of  the  Bill,  though  he  thought  some 
portions  of  it  were  open  to  objection;  "  but,"  he  added,  "  I 
do  not  see  that  there  is  sufficient  reason,  or  indeed,  any 
reason  at  all,  why,  having  granted,  to  the  entire  commu- 
nity the  power  of  professing  and  practicing  what  form  of 
religion  they  please  during  life,  you  should  say  to  them  as 
.  to  their  relations  when  dead,  '  we  will  at  last  lay  our  hands 
upon  you,  and  not  permit  you  the  privilege  of  being  buried 
in  the  church  yard,  where  perhaps  the  ashes  of  your  an- 
cestors repose,  or  at  any  rate  in  the  place  of  which  you  are 
parishioners,  unless  you  appear  there  as  members  of  the 
Church  of  England,  and,  as  members  of  that  Church,  have 


232  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

her  service  read  over  your  remains' — that  appears  to  me  an 
inconsistency  and  an  anomaly  in  the  present  state  of  the  law, 
and  is  in  the  nature  of  a  grievance" — Sir  Morton  Peto's 
Bill  became  law. 

Another  grand  reform  that  marked  these  years  of  won- 
derful years,  was  the  abolition  of  the  University  Tests. 
The  tests  which  existed  at  the  Universities  had  for  their  dis- 
tinct and  direct  object  the  limitation  of  the  advantages  of 
these  great  national  seats  of  learning  to  the  members  of  the 
Church  of  England.  Under  the  arrangement  that  then  ex- 
isted all  Dissenters  were  excluded.  This  was  naturally  felt 
to  be  an  injustice.  A  student  might  pass  all  examinations 
with  honor,  but  if  he  had  a  conscience  and  could  not  swear 
unfeigned  assent  and  consent  to  the  thirty-nine  articles,  he 
was  refused  his  diploma  and  degree.  This  was  not  a  gross 
but  a  refined  injustice  in  scholarly  England.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's Bill  for  the  abolition  of  these  tests  struggled  into 
law.  The  result  was  that  all  lay  students,  of  whatever  re- 
ligious creed,  were  in  future  to  be  admitted  to  the  universi- 
ties on  equal  terms  Thus  was  swept  away  by  this  great 
reformer  another  shred  of  religious  intolerance.  It  is  sin- 
gular to  note  that  the  first  year  after  the  abolition  of  the 
Tests,  the  Senior  Wranglership  of  Cambridge  was  won  by 
the  son  of  a  Baptist  minister  then  resident  in  Cambridge. 

Prior  to  the  passing  of  the  last  Reform  Bill,  there  were 
few  safeguards  so  absolutely  necessary  for  the  protection  of 
the  ordinary  voter  as  the  Ballot.  On  its  first  introduction 
the  Bill  •  was  particularly  offensive  to  the  then  Conservative 
Party,  and  steps  were  taken  by  them  to  mark  their  sense  of 
objection,  whilst  long-continued  and  virulent  opposition  was 
shown.  It  at  length  passed  the  House  of  Commons,  but  'the 
House  of  Peers  rejected  it  with  decision,  the  voting  being 
97  to  48,  or  nearly  two  to  one,  against  the  Bill  itself.  It 
was  re-introduced  in  the  following  session  by  Mr.  Forster, 
and  after  protracted  debates  and  some  important  amend- 


YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL    PROGRESS.  233 

I 

ments,  passed  the  Lower  House,  but  was  again  met  in  the 
Upper  House  with  amendments,  the  most  important  of 
which  was  a  clause  stating  that  the  operation  of  the  Bill 
should  be  optional.  This  was  held  by  the  Government  to 
be  a  direct  mode  of  rendering  the  Bill  utterly  useless,  and 
as  such  was  declined.  A  conference  took  place,  and  event- 
ually the  Bill  passed  both  houses  and  became  law.  It  is 
perhaps,  too  early  to  measure  the  total  result  of  the  Ballot 
Act,  although  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  its  influence  is 
still  on  the  increase.  The  first  effect  was  a  sense  of  doubt 
as  to  how  far  the  voting  was  really  secret,  but  a  conviction 
is  gaining  ground  that  for  all  practical  purposes  it  answers 
the  end  for  which  it  was  constructed.  It  may  here  be  men- 
tioned that  the  Ballot  Act,  as  it  is  at  present  administered, 
is  open  to  the  possibilities  of  very  grave  abuse.  Further 
experience  will  probably  demonstrate  the  necessity  for  some 
changes  in  the  actual  working  of  the  Act  itself. 

One  of  the  most  daring  steps  in  all  Mr.  Gladstone's  car- 
rer  was  his  abolition  by  Royal  warrant  of  the  system  of 
purchase  in  the  army.  By  this  measure,  he  made  a  thous- 
and foes,  but  he  won  the  heart  of  the  British  army  by  his 
daring  high-handed  course.  One  of  the  strongest  anomalies 
in  connection  with  a  State  appointment,  was  the  system 
which  had  grown  up,  and  by  which  an  officer  purchased  his 
successive  steps  in  rank  with  the  same  freedom  and  certainty 
as  he  could  purchase  a  sum  in  Consols.  When  stated  in  its 
rough  outline  it  seemed  too  ridiculous  to  be  credible,  but  it 
was  less  ridiculous  than  it  seemed.  To  say  that  a  man's 
position  as  an  officer  was  actualy  dependent  upon  the  length 
of  his  purse,  was  to  throw  contempt  on  the  whole  arrange- 
ment. It  was,  however,  found  in  practice  that  so  far  as 
courage  and  skill  were  concerned,  the  men  who  successively 
bought  their  steps  in  rank,  fought  with  as  much  courage  and 
ability  as  though  they  had  earned  their  position  by  hard 
and  studious  care.  The  general  position,  however,  remained 


234  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

untouched,  that  so  long  as  purchase  formed  a  part  of  the 
system  of  the  army,  each  man  who  had  paid  for  his  position 
had  a  practical  claim  for  the  position  he  occupied. 

This  was  wisely  held  to  be  incompatible  with  the  necessary 
freedom  of  action  required  by  the  changes  which  had  crept 
over  modern  warfare;  it  was  therefore  decided  that  a  Bill 
abolishing  the  right  to  purchase  should  be  introduced. 
Some  idea  may  be  formed  of  the  absolute  necessity  for  such 
a  step;  when  it  is  stated  that  the  amount  required  to  repay 
the  officers  the  amount  they  had  disbursed  in  the  purchase  of 
their  commissions  was  between  $37.000,000  and  $42,000.000. 

In  the  course  of  the  debate  Mr.  Trevelyan  quoted  the 
words  of  Havelock,  who  said  that  he  was  sick  for  years  wait- 
ing for  his  promotion,  which  three  sots  and  two  fools  had 
purchased  over  him,  and  that  if  he  had  no  family  to  support 
he  would  not  serve  another  hour. 

The  Bill  passed  its  second  reading,  but  was  discussed  at 
inordinate  length  in  Committee.  The  House  of  Lords  at 
once  came  to  the  rescue,  and  at  a  meeting  of  Conservative 
Peers,  it  was  resolved  to  oppose  the  Bill.  After  considerable 
discussion  the  House  of  Lords  rejected  the  Bill  by  155  to 
130.  The  action  was  a  grave  one,  and  necessitated  equal 
grave  action  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  This  came  in 
due  course.  On  the  20th  of  July,  1871,  Sir  George  Grey 
put  a  question  in  the  House  on  the  subject,  and  Mr.  Glad- 
stone in  reply  stated: 

' '  That  the  Government  had  resolved  to  advise  Her  Maj- 
esty to  cancel  the  Royal  Warrant  under  which  purchase  was 
legal.  That  advice  had  been  accepted  by  Her  Majesty,  and 
a  new  warrant  had  been  framed  in  terms  conformable  with 
the  law.  It  was  consequently  his  duty  on  the  part  of  the 
Government  to  state  that  after  the  1st  of  November  ensuing, 
purchase  in  the  Army  would  no  longer  exist." 

The  House  of  Lords  were  very  irate  at  the  step  which  had 
been  taken,  and  passed  a  vote  of  censure  on  the  Govern- 


YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL    PROGRESS.  235 

ment,  but  at  the  same  time  passed  the  Bill  without  a  divis- 
ion. The  use  of  the  Royal  Prerogative  for  the  purpose  was 
keenly  and  bitterly  discussed,  and  the  absolute  legality  of 
the  step  was  held  to  be  open  to  discussion.  A  letter  from  Sir 
Roundell  Palmer  was  read  on  the  last  day  of  the  Session  ap- 
proving the  issue  of  the  Royal  Warrant — such  a  Warrant 
was  within  the  undoubted  powers  of  the  Crown.  This  set- 
tled the  legal  point,  but  the  question  still  remained  as  to 
how  far  such  a  course  was  justifiable.  The  answer  will 
probably  be  found  in  the  recognition  that  such  a  course  of 
action  probably  saved  an  outburst  of  public  opinion,  the  re- 
sults of  which  might  have  proved  even  less  agreeable. 

This  was  no  doubt  a  high-handed,  not  to  say  autocratic, 
step.  Perhaps  the  Queen,  certainly  the  House  of  Lords, 
never  forgave  him.  It  was  denounced  as  Csesarism  and 
Cromwellism  in  some  quarters.  No  doubt  there  were  touches 
both  of  Csesar  and  of  Cromwell  in  Mr.  Gladstone,  and 
it  may  be  that  more  than  once  he  would  have  been  glad 
to  have  imitated  the  courage  of  the  Soldier  of  St.  Ives,  and 
have  sent  the  House  pf  Commons  packing.  Punch  of  this 
period  had  a  remarkable  picture  of  Mr.  Gladstone  as  "Ajax 
Defying  the  Lightning. "  Thousands  who  call  in  question 
the  wisdom  of  his  course,  could  not  help  admiring  his  pluck, 
and  in  the  shibboleth  of  all  true  Englishmen,  "pluck,"  is  a  car- 
dinal virtue.  Anyway,  Purchase  in  the  Army,  was  a  thing 
of  the  past. 

Prior  to  the  passing  of  the  last  Reform  Bill,  there,  were 
few  safe-guards  so  absolutely  necessary  for  the  protection  of 
the  ordinary  voter  as  the  Ballot.  On  its  first  introduction 
the  Bill  was  particularly  offensive  to  the  then  Conservative 
Party,  and  steps  were  taken  by  them  to  mark  their  sense  of 
objection,  whilst  long-continued  and  virulent  opposition  was 
shown.  It  at  length  passed  the  House  of  Commons,  but  the 
House-  of  Peers  rejected  it  with  decision,  the  voting  being 
97  to  48,  .or  nearly  two  to  one,  against  the  Bill  itself.  It 


236  LIFE    OF   GLADSTONE. 

was  re-introduced  in  the  following  Session  by  Mr.  Foster, 
and  after  protracted  debates  and  some  important  amend- 
ments, passed  the  Lower  House,  but  was  again  met  in  the 
Upper  House  with  amendments,  the  most  important  of 
which  was  a  clause  stating  that  the  operation  of  the  Bill 
should  be  optional.  This  was  held  by  the  Government  to 
be  a  direct  mode  of  rendering  the  Bill  utterly  useless,  and 
as  such  was  declined.  A  conference  took  place,  and  event- 
ually the  Bill  passed  both  Houses  and  became  a  law.  It  is, 
perhaps,  too  early  to  measure  the  total  result  of  the  Ballot 
Act,  although  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  its  influence  is 
still  on  the  increase.  The  first  effect  was  a  sense  of  doubt 
as  to  how  far  the  voting  was  really  secret,  but  a  conviction 
is  gaining  ground  that  for  all  practical  purposes  it  answers 
the  end  for  which  it  was  constructed.  It  may  here  be  men- 
tioned that  the  Ballot  Act,  as  it  is  at  present  administered, 
is  open  to  the  possibilities  of  very  grave  abuse.  Further 
experience  will  probably  demonstrate  the  necessity  for  some 
changes  in  the  actual  working  of  the  Act  itself. 

The  years  1869, 1870  and  18 Tl  are  banner  years  of  prog- 
ress in  English  politics.  Those  eventful  years  witnessed 
the  passing  of  the  Irish  Church  Act,  the  Endowed  Schools 
Bill,  the  Bankruptcy  Bill,  the  Habitual  Criminals  Bill,  the 
Irish  Land  Act,  the  Elementary  Education  Act,  the  Aboli- 
tion of  Purchase  in  the  Army,  the  negotiation  of  the  Wash- 
ington Treaty,  the  passing  of  the  University  Test  Bill  and 
of  the  Trades  Union  Bill  and  the  repeal  of  the  Ecclesiastical 
Titles  Act. 

All  through  the  summer  of  1871  it  was  manifest  that 
Mr.  Gladstone's  popularity  was  waning.  Something  had  to 
be  done.  The  veteran  statesman  resolved  on  addressing  his 
Greenwich  Constituents.  He  knew  there  would  be  a  good 
deal  to  face,  possibly  direct  open  hostility.  But  this  did  not 
•  daunt  him,  and  perchance  he  had  some  faith  in  his  power 
over  an  audience.  It  was  the  privilege  of  the  present  writer 


YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL    PROGRESS.  237 

to  be  one  of  a  goodly  company  of  twenty  thousand  people 
who  went  down  to  Blackheath  on  Saturday  morning,  Octo- 
ber 28th,  1871.  If  a  lenghty  sketch  in  detail  is  given,  it 
is  because  of  the  conviction  that  it  was  one  of  the  most  won- 
derful political  meetings  ever  held  in  ancient  or  modern 
days,  and  that  the  speech  was  one  of  the  most  wonderful 
ever  delivered  by  this  great  master  of  the  art  of  oratory. 
Early  attendance  and  some  degree  of  persistance  secured  a 
place  near  the  temporary  hustings.  Mrs.  Gladstone,  as 
always,  was  by  her  husband's  side.  The  Daily  News  tells 
the  story  of  that  turbulent  scene: 

"  The  dense  mass  heaved,  and  there  rose  from  it  an  audible  gasp  as 
a  burst  of  cheering,was  heard  in  the  offing.  Nearer  rolled  the  cheers, 
mingled  with  some  yells,  but  the  silence  of  keen  expectancy  reigned 
before  the  hustings.  The  door  at  the  back  of  the  booth  opened; 
there  was  some  confusion  among  its  occupants,  and  then — here  was 
Mr.  Gladstone,  standing  at  the  right  hand  of  Mr.  Angerstein.  Then 
the  throng  broke  the  silence  of  expectancy.  Peal  after  peal  of 
cheering  rent  the  air.  There  was  a  waving  forest  of  hats.  The 
cheering  was  spasmodic — it  was  too  loud  to  be  sustained,  and  ever  as 
it  drooped  a  little  was  audible  the  steady  automaton-like  hissing. 
But  as  yet  there  was  little  or  no  hooting,  only  the  bitter,  persistent 
hissing  in  the  lulls  of  the  cheering.  If  Mr.  Angerstein  flatters  him- 
self that  in  the  remarks  he  made  introducing  Mr.  Gladstone,  he-  was 
audible  ten  feet  to  his  front,  he  simply  labors  under  a  delusion.  The 
noise  that  drowned  his  words  was  utterly  indescribable.  When  this 
brief  preface  was  over,  Mr.  Gladstone  stood  forward  bareheaded. 
There  was  something  deeply  dramatic  in  the  intense  silence  which 
fell  upon  the  vast  crowd  when  the  renewed  burst  of  cheering,  with 
which  he  was  greeted,  had  subsided.  But  the  first  word  he  spoke 
was  the  signal  of  a  fearful  tempest  of  din.  From  all  around  the 
skirts  of  the  crowd,  rose  a  something  between  a  groan  and  a  howl. 
So  fierce  was  it  that  for  a  little  space,  it  might  laugh  to  scorn  the 
burst  of  cheering  that  strove  to  over-master  it.  The  battle  raged 
between  the  two  sounds  and  looking  straight  upon  the  excited  crowd 
stood  Mr.  Gladstone,  calm,  resolute,  patient.  It  was  fine  to  note  the 
manly  British  impulse  of  fair-play  that  gained  him  a  hearing  when 
the  first  ebullition  had  exhausted  itself,  and  the  revulsion  that  fol- 
lowed so  quickly  and  spontaneously  on  the  realization  of  the  sug- 
gestion that  it  was  mean  to  hoot  a  man  down  without  giving  him  a 
chance  to  speak  for  himself.  After  that  Mr.  Gladstone  may  be  said 
to  have  had  it  all  his  own  way.  Of  course  at  intervals  there  were 


238  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

repetitions  of  the  interruptions  When  he  first  broached  the  dock-; 
yard  question,  there  was  long,  loud,  and  fervent  groaning;  when  he 
named  Ireland  a  cry  rose  of  "God  save  Ireland !"  from  the  serried 
files  of  Hibernians  that  had  rendezvoused  on  the  left  flank.  But 
long  before  he  had  finished,  he  had  so  enthralled  his  audience,  that 
impatient  disgust  was  expressed  at  the  handful  who  still  continued 
their  abortive  efforts  at  interruption.  When  at  length  the  two 
hours'  oration  was  over,  and  the  question  was  put  that  stibstantially 
was,  whether  Mr.  Gladstone  had  cleared  away  from  the  judgment 
of  his  constituency  the  fog  of  prejudice  and  ill-feeling  that  unques- 
tionably encircled  him  and  his  Ministry,  the  affirmative  reply  was 
given  in  bursts  of  all  but  unanimous  cheering,  than  which  none  more 
earnest  ever  greeted  a  political  leader.  Rarely  has  an  English 
Premier  ventured  to  throw  himself  thus  completely  upon  the  sympa- 
thies of  the  great  mass  of  the  people." 

When  Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  course  of  his  address  began 
to  pay  his  respects  to  the  House  of  Lords,  he  was  inter- 
rupted by  a  voice,  ' '  Leave  the  constitution  of  the  House  of 
Lords  alone  !"  Whereupon  he  proceeded  to  say:— 

"  I  am  not  prepared  to  agree  with  my  friend  there,  because  the 
constitution  of  the  House  of  Lords  has  often  been  a  subject  of  con- 
sideration amongst  the  wisest  and  most  sober-minded  men;  as,  for 
example,  when  a  proposal — of  which  my  friend  disapproves  perhaps, 
— was  made  a  few  years  ago  to  make  a  moderate  addition  to  the  House 
of  Lords,  of  peers  holding  their  peerage  for  life.  I  am  not  going  to 
discuss  that  particular  measure;  I  will  only  say,  without  entering 
into  details  that  would  be  highly  interesting,  but  which  the  vast 
range  of  the  subject  makes  impossible  on  the  present  occasion — I  will 
only  say  that  I  believe  there  are  various  particulars  in  which  the 
constitution  of  the  House  of  Lords  might,  under  favorable  circum- 
stances, be  improved.  And  I  am  bound  to  say  that,  though  I  believe 
there  are  some  politicians  bearing  the  name  of  Liberal  who  approve 
the  proceedings  of  the  House  of  Lords  with  respect  to  the  Ballot  Bill 
at  the  close  of  last  season,  I  must  own  that  I  deeply  lament  that  pro- 
ceeding. I  have  a  shrewd  suspicion  in  toy  mind  that  a  very  large 
proportion  of  the  people  of  England  have  a  sneaking  kindness  for  the 
hereditary  principle.  My  observation  has  not  been  of  a  very  brief 
period,  and  what  I  have  observed  is  this,  that  wherever  there  is  any- 
thing to  be  done,  or  to  be  given,  and  there  are  two  candidates  for  it 
who  are  exactly  alike — alike  in  opinions,  alike  in  character,  alike  in 
possessions,  the  one  being  a  commoner  and  the  other  a  lord — the 
Englishman  is  very  apt  indeed  to  prefer  the  lord." 

Detailing  the  great  advantages  which  had  accrued  from 
the  legislation  of  the  past  generation,  including  Free  Trade, 


YEARS    OF   WONDERFUL    PROGRESS.  239 

the  removal  of  twenty  millions  of  taxation,  a  cheap  press, 
and  an  Education  bill,  Mr.  Gladstone  enforced  the  lesson 
that  Englishmen  must  depend  upon  themselves  for  their 
future  well-being  and  improvement,  and  thus  conclu4ed  his 
wonderful  address  : 

"  How,  in  a  country  where  wealth  accumulates  with  such  vast 
rapidity,  are  we  to  check  the  growth  of  luxury  and  selfishness  by  a 
sound  and  healthy  opinion  ?  How  are  we  to  secure  to  labor  its  due 
honor;  I  mean  not  only  to  the  labor  of  the  hands,  but  to  the  labor  of 
the  man  with  any  and  all  the  faculties  which  God  has  given  him  ? 
How  are  we  to  make  ourselves  believe,  and  how  are  we  to  bring  the 
country  to  believe,  that  in  the  sight  of  God  and  man  labor  is  honora- 
ble and  idleness  is  contemptible  ?  Depend  upon  it,  gentlemen,  I  do 
but  speak  the  serious  and  solemn  truth  when  I  say  that  beneath  the 
political  questions  which  are  found  on  the  surface  lie,  those  deeper 
and  more  searching  questions  that  enter  into  the  breast  and  strike 
home  to  the  conscience  and  mind  of  every  man;  and  it  is  upon  the 
solution  of  these  questions  that  the  well-being  of  England  must  de- 
pend. Gentlemen,  I  use  the  words  of  a  popular  poet  when  I  give 
vent  to  this  sentiment  of  hope,  with  which  for  one  I  venture  to  look 
forward  to  the  future  of  this  country.  He  says: 

'  The  ancient  virtue  is  not  dead,  and  long  may  it  endure. 
May  wealth  in  England — ' 

and  I  am  sure  he  means  by  wealth  that  higher  sense  of  it — prosperity, 
and  sound  prosperity — 

'  May  wealth  in  England  never  fail,  nor  pity  for  the  poor  ' 

May  strength  and  the  means  of  material  prosperity  never  be  wanting 
to  us;  but  it  is  far  more  important  that  there  shall  not  be  wanting 
the  disposition  to  use  those  means  aright.  Gentlemen,  I  shall  go 
from  this  meeting,  having  given  you  the  best  account  of  my  position 
in  my  feeble  power,  within  the  time  and  under  the  circumstances  of 
the  day.  I  shall  go  from  this  meeting  strengthened  by  the  comfort 
of  your  kindness  and  your  indulgence,  to  resume  my  humble  share  in 
public  labors.  No  motive  will  more  operate  upon  me  in  stimulating 
me  to  the  discharge  of  duty  than  the  gratitude  with  which  I  look 
back  upon  the,  I  believe,  unexampled  circumstances  under  which  you 
made  me  your  representative.  But  I  shall  endeavor— I  shall  make  it 
my  hope — to  show  that  gratitude  less  by  words  of  idle  compliment  or 
hollow  flattery,  than  by  a  manful  endeavor,  according  to  the  measure 
of  my  gifts,  humble  as  they  may  be,  to  render  service  -to  a  Queen  who 
lives  in  the  hearts  of  the  people,  and  to  a  nation,  with  respect  to 
which  I  will  say  that  through  all  posterity,  whether  it  be  praised  or 
whether  it  be  blamed,  whether  it  be  acquitted  or  whether  it  be  con- 


24:0  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

demned,  it  will  be  acquitted  or  condemned  upon  this  issue,  of  having 
made  a  good  or  a  bad  use  of  the  most  splendid  opportunities;  of  hav- 
ing turned  to  proper  account,  or  failed  to  turn  to  account,  the  powers, 
the  energies,  the  faculties  which  rank  the  people  of  this  little  island 
as  among  the  few  great  nations  that  have  stamped  their  name  and 
secured  their  fame  among  the  greatest  nations  of  the  world." 

At  a  great  meeting  held  in  Liverpool,  Mr.  Gladstone 
said  :  "  Having  produced  this  measure,  founded  in  a  spirit 
of  moderation,  we  hope  to  support  it  with  decision.  It  is 
not  in  our  power  to  secure  the  passing  of  the  measure;  that 
rests  more  with  you,  and  more  with  those  whom  you  repre- 
sent, and  of  whom  you  are  a  sample,  than  it  does  with  us. 
Still,  we  have  a  great  responsibilty,  and  are  conscious  of  it ; 
and  we  do  not  intend  to  flinch  from  it.  We  stake  our- 
selves— we  stake  our  existence  as  a  Government — and  we 
also  stake  our  political  character  on  the  adoption  of  the  bill 
in  its  main  provisions.  You  have  a  right  to  expect  from 
us  that  we  should  tell  you  what  we  mean,  and  that  the 
trumpet  which  it  is  our  business  to  blow  should  give  forth 
no  uncertain  sound.  Its  sound  has  not  been,  and,  I  trust, 
will  not  be,  uncertain.  We  have  passed  the  Rubicon — we 
have  broken  the  bridge,  and  burned  the  boats  behind  us. 
We  have  advisedly  cut  off  the  means  of  retreat,  and  having 
done  this,  we  hope  that,  as  far  as  time  is  yet  permitted,  we 
have  done  our  duty  to  the  Crown  and  to  the  nation. " 

Nothing  can  be  more  interesting  to  Americans  than  the 
position  Mr.  Gladstone  took  on  the  question  of  International 
Arbitration,  and  especially  in  relation  to  the  final  settle- 
ment of  the  Alabama  claims.  No  man  is  at  all  times  wise. 
An  impartial  and  honest  judgment  will  not  hesitate  to  take 
note  of  a  great  man's  mistakes.  In  the  matter  of  our  Civil 
War,  Mr.  Gladstone  was  gravely  mistaken.  But  he  was 
honest  in  his  utterances,  and  we  are  ready  to  give  them 
word  for  word. 

In  October  1862,  Mr.  Gladstone  visited  Newcastle-on- 
Tyne,  and  was  received  with  extraordinary  demonstrations 


YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL    PROGRESS. 

of  popularity.  He  made  what  has  been  called ."  a  royal 
progress  "  down  the  Tyne,  which  has  been  fully  described 
by  a  local  journalist.  "It  was  not  possible  to  show  to  royal 
visitors  more  demonstrations  of  honor  than  were  showered 
on  this  illustrious  commoner  and  his  wife.  ...  At  every 
point,  at  every  bank  and  hill  and  factory,  in  every  opening 
where  people  could  stand  or  climb,  expectant  crowds  awaited 
Mr.  Gladstone's  arrival.  Women  and  children  in  all  cos- 
tumes and  of  all  conditions  lined  the  shores  .  .  .  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Gladstone  passed.  Cannon  boomed  from  every  point ; 
.  .  .  such  a  succession  of  cannonading  never  before  greeted 
triumphant  conqueror  on  the  march."  A  great  banquet  was 
given  in  Gladstone's  honor,  and  in  making  a  speech  after- 
wards, he  let  fall  a  few  words  with  regard  to  the  situation  of 
affairs  in  America,  words  that  were  certainly  injudicious,  a 
fact  which  he  himself  afterwards  recognized.  He  had  said, 
— and  the  fact  of  his  being  a  member  of  the  Government 
of  course  gave  his  utterances  a  ten-fold  importance, — "We 
may  have  our  own  opinions  about  slavery,  we  may  be  for  or 
against  the  South,  but  there  is  no  doubt,  I  think,  about  this — 
Jefferson  Davis  and  the  other  leaders  of  the  South  have 
made  an  army  ;  they  are  making,  it  appears,  a  navy  ;  and 
they  have  made,  gentlemen,  what  is  even  of  more  impor- 
tance— they  have  made  a  nation.  We  may  anticipate  with 
certainty  the  success  of  the  Southern  States,  so  far  as  re- 
gards their  separation  from  the  North."  It  is  certainly  not 
safe  to  prophesy,  for  the  prophetic  portion  of  this  ill-timed 
speech  was  very  soon  proved  entirely  wrong.  It  is  curious 
to  remember  that  Gladstone's  great  political  rival,  Disraeli, 
also  foretold  the  success  of  the  Southern  States.  He  said 
that  the  results  of  the  civil  war  would  be  ' '  An  America  of 
armies,  of  diplomacy,  of  rival  states,  of  maneuvering 
cabinets,  of  frequent  turbulence  and  probably  frequent 
wars."  It  is  manifest  that  even  shrewd  and  sagacious 
statesmen  are  capable  of  nuking  egregious  blunders,  espec- 


24:2  LIFE    OF   GLADSTONE. 

ially  when  they  venture  into  the  realms  of  prophesy.  All 
honor  to  them  however,  if  having  discovered  their  mistake 
they  are  willing  to  make  a  few  and  generous  avowals  that 
they  were  mistaken.  America  has  had  few  sincerer  admirers 
and  no  truer  friend  than  William  Ewert  Gladstone.  And 
this  was  abundantly  proved  in  the  matter  of  the  Alabama 
Claims.  Mr.  George  W.  Russell  says: 

There  is  no  one  item  of  policy  in  which  Mr.  Gladstone 
has  been  engaged,  that  has  done  so  much  for  the  future  of 
the  world,  as  the  final  settlement  of  the  Alabama  Claims  by 
arbitration.  If  it  did  not  inaugurate  a  new  system,  it  car- 
ried the  system  of  arbitration  further  than  it  had  ever  been 
before,  and  under  conditions  which  ensured  its  future  ap- 
plication to  causes  of  great  and  permanent  importance. 

This  was  a  gain  for  humanity. 

As  is  well  known,  the  dispute  arose  out  of  the  War  of 
Secession.  The  South  claimed  its  right,  as  a  partner  in  the 
United  States  of  America,  to  go  its  own  way,  now  that  a 
question  of  policy  had  risen  in  which  the  views  of  the  North 
and  South  were  in  entire'  antagonism.  The  struggle  had 
been  pending  for  a  considerable  period.  When  the  war 
broke  out  a  number  of  vessels  escaped  from  British  ports 
as  cruisers  of  the  Southern  States,  and  inflicted  great  loss 
and  damage  on  the  ships  and  commerce  of  the  North.  After 
the  war  closed,  the  United  States  put  in  a  claim  for  com- 
pensation. This  was  not  admitted  by  the  English  govern- 
ment, and  the  question  remained  open,  and  at  times  threat- 
ening. 

At  length  it  was  deemed  advisable  to  endeavor  to  settle 
all  outstanding  differences  by  arbitration,  and  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's government  had  the  honor  of  expressing  its  willing- 
ness to  abide  by  the  decision  of  the  arbitrators  The  Con- 
gress met  at  Geneva,  and  gave  their  decision  by  which 
England  was  called  upon  to  pay  $16,154,830  in  satisfaction 
and  final  settlement  of  all  claims,  including  interest.  Sir 


YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL    PROGRESS.  243 

Alexander  Cockburn,  who  represented  Great  Britain,  dif- 
fered from  the  rest  of  the  arbitrators,  but  admitted  the  jus- 
tice of  the  award  so  far  as  the  Alabama  was  concerned.  He 
however  counselled  the  acceptance  of  the  decision  of  a  trib- 
unal by  whose  award  they  had  freely  consented  to  abide. 
This  advice  was  followed  and  has  borne  good  fruit  since. 

In  March  1873,  Mr.  Gladstone  brought  forward  a  Bill 
for  University  education  in  Ireland.  It  was  his  third  as- 
sault on  what  he  called  the  deadly  '  <  Upas  tree  "  of  Irish 
misgovernment  which  he  was  determined  to  cut  down. 
With  magnificent  enthusiasm  he  toiled  at  his  task.  Bitter 
opposition  proved  only  to  be  an  inspiration.  In  closing  his 
address  on  what  he  called  the  solemn  nature  of  the  subject 
he  said: — 

"  We  have  not  spared  labor  and  application  in  the  preparation  of 
this  certainly  complicated,  and,  I  venture  to  hope,  also,  comprehen- 
sive plan.  We  have  sought  to  provide  a  complete  remedy  for  what 
we  thought,  and  for  what  we  have  long  marked  and  held  up  to  public 
attention  as  a  palpable  grievance — a  grievance  of  conscience.  But 
we  have  not  thought  that  in  removing  that  grievance,  we  were  dis- 
charging either  the  whole  or  the  main  part  of  our  duty.  It  is  one 
thing  to  clear  obstructions  from  the  ground;  it  is  another  to  raise  the 
fabric.  And  the  fabric  which  we  seek  to  raise  is  a  substantive,  organ- 
ized system  under  which  all  the  sons  of  Ireland,  be  their  professions, 
be  their  opinions  what  they  may,  may  freely  meet  in  their  own 
ancient,  noble,  historic  university  for  the  advancement  of  learning  in 
that  country.  The  removal  of  grievance  is  the  negative  portion  of 
the  project ;  the  substantive  and  positive  part  of  it,  academic  reform. 
We  do  not  ask  the  House  to  embark  upon  a  scheme  which  can  be 
described  as  one  of  mere  innovation.  We  ask  you  now  to  give  to  Ire- 
land that  which  has  long  been  desired,  which  has  been  often 
attempted,  but  which  has  never  been  attained ;  and  we  ask  you  to 
give  it  to  Ireland,  founding  the  measure  upon  the  principles  on  which 
you  have  already  acted  in  the  universities  of  England.  We  commit 
the  plan  to  the  prudence  and  the  patriotism  of  this  House,  which  we 
have  so  often  experienced,  and  in  which  the  country  places,  as  we 
well  know,  an  entire  confidence.  I  will  not  lay  stress  upon  the  evils 
which  will  flow  from  its  failure,  from  its  rejection,  in  prolonging  and 
embittering  the  controversies  which  have  for  many,  for  too  many 
years  been  suffered  to  exist.  I  would  rather  dwell  upon  a  more 
pleasing  prospect — upon  my  hope,  even  upon  my  belief,  that  this 


24:4:  LIFE    OF   GLADSTONE. 

plan  in  its  essential  features  may  meet  with  the  approval  of  the 
House  and  of  the  country.  At  any  rate  I  am  convinced  that  if  it  be 
your  pleasure  to  adopt  it,  you  will  by  its  means  enable  Irishmen  to 
raise  their  country  to  a  height  in  the  sphere  of  human  culture,  such 
as  will  be  worthy  of  the  genius  of  the  people,  and  such  as  may,  per- 
haps, emulate  those  oldest,  and  possibly  best,  traditions  of  her  his- 
tory, upon  which  Ireland  still  so  fondly  dwells." 

The  second  reading  of  the  Bill  was  defeated  by-  a  major- 
ity of  three.  Mr.  Gladstone  resigned.  The  Queen  sent  for 
Mr.  Disraeli,  but  that  astute  gentleman  declined  to  form  a 
Government,  on  the  ground  that  the  majority  of  the  House 
was  against  him.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  compelled  therefore 
to  continue  at  his  post.  But  the  session  dragged  on  wearily 
till  the  dawn  of  another  year,  and  on  the  morning  of  January 
the  23d,  1874,  all  London  and  the  world  awoke  to  be  startled 
by  what  was  called  for  a  longtime  "Gladstone's  coup  d'etat." 
Mr.  Gladstone  issued  an  address  to  the  Electors  of  Green- 
wich, announcing  that  the  existing  Parliament  would  be  dis- 
solved and  a  new  one  summoned  to  meet  without  delay. 
Such  a  day  had  hardly  been  in  London  since  Cromwell  sent 
the  "Rump  Parliament"  a-packing.  Had  you  walked  from 
the  marble  arch  to  the  Mansion  House,  you  would  have 
heard  on  almost  every  lip  the  question:  "What  does  Glad- 
stone mean  ? " 

The  election  took  place  early  in  the  spring.  The  Liber- 
als were  badly  beaten.  The  Tories  rejoiced  in  a  substantial 
majority  of  forty-six.  Mr.  Gladstone  resigned  without 
waiting  for  the  meeting  of  Parliament.  Not  only  did  he 
resign  the  Premiership,  but  he  resigned  also  the  leadership 
of  the  Liberal  Party,  and  resolved  on  retiring  from  public 
life.  He  met  his  Cabinet  to  say  .farewell  on  the  13th  of 
March.  Mr.  Foster,  in  his  diary,  records  the  pathetic  inci- 
dent thus : — 

"MARCH  13th,  1874. — Cabinet  again  at  twelve.  Decid- 
ed to  resign.  *  *  *  *  Gladstone  made  us  quite  a  touching 
little  speech.  He  began  playfully.  This  was  the  last  of  some 


YEARS   OF   WONDERFUL   PROGRESS.  245 

one  hundred  and  fifty  cabinets  or  so,  and  he  wished  to  say  to  his 
colleagues  with  what  "profound  gratitude."  And  here  he 
completely  broke  down  and  could  say  nothing,  except  that 
he  could  not  enter  on  the  details.  *****  Tears  came 
to  my  eyes;  we  were  all  touched." 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  sincerely  desirous  of  enjoying  that 
period  of  repose  which  he  had  fairly  earned,  though  there 
were  not  lacking  opponents  who  attributed  his  comparative 
retirement  from  Parliamentary  life  to  personal  pique.  His 
letter  to  Lord  Granville,  however,  dated  11, 'Carl ton  House 
Terrace,  March  12,  fully  explains  the  reason  for  that  step 
which  took  the  House  and  the  country  somewhat  by  sur- 
prise : — 

"My  dear  Granville, — I  have  issued  a  circular  to  members  of 
Parliament  of  the  Liberal  party  on  the  occasion  of  the  opening  of 
Parliamentary  business.  But  I  feel  it  to  be  necessary  that,  whil'e  dis- 
charging1 this  duty,  I  should  explain  what  a  circular  could  not  convey 
with  regard  to  my  individual  position  at  the  present  time.  I  need 
not  apologize  for  addressing  these  explanations  to  you.  Independ- 
ently of  other  reasons  for  so  troubling  you,  it  is  enough  to  observe 
that  you  have  very  long  represented  the  Liberal  party,  and  have  also 
acted  on  behalf  of  the  late  Government,  from  its  commencement  to 
its  close,  in  the  House  of  Lords. 

"For  a  variety  of  reasons  personal  to  myself,  I  could  not  contem- 
plate any  unlimited  extension  of  active  political  service ;  and  I  am 
anxious  that  it  should  be  clearly  understood  by  those  friends  with 
whom  I  have  acted  in  the  direction  of  affairs,  that  at  my  age  I  must  / 
reserve  my  entire  freedom  to  divest  myself  of  all  the  responsibilities 
of  leadership  at  no  distant  time.  The  need  of  rest  will  prevent  me 
from  giving  more  than  occasional  attendance  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons during  the  present  session. 

"I  should  be  desirous,  shortly  before  the  commencement  of  the 
session  of  1875,  to  consider  whether  there  would  be  advantage  in  my 
placing  my  services  for  a  time  at  the  disposal  of  the  Liberal  Party,  or 
whether  I  should  then  claim  exemption  from  the  duties  I  have  hitherto 
discharged.  If,  however,  there  should  be  reasonable  ground  for 
believing  that,  instead  of  the  course  which  I  have  sketched,  it  would 
be  preferable,  in  the  view  of  the  party  generally,  for  me  to  assume  at 
once  the  place  of  an  independent  member,  I  should  willingly  adopt 
the  latter  alternative.  But  I  shall  retain  all  that  desire  I  have 
hitherto  felt  for  the  welfare  of  the  party,  and  if  the  gentlemen  com- 


24:6  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

posing-  it  should  think  fit  either  to  choose  a  leader  or  make  provision 
ad  interim,  with  a  view  to  the  convenience  of  the  present  year,  the 
person  designated  would,  of  course,  command  from  me  any  assistance 
which  he  might  find  occasion  to  seek,  and  which  it  might  be  in  my 
power  to  render." 

For  a  time  the  Liberal  Party  enjoyed  the  partial  aid  of 
Mr.  Gladstone,  but  this  condition  of  things  was  sure  to 
prove  unsatisfactory.  And  so,  on  the  13th  of  January,  1875, 
Mr.  Gladstone  wrote  to  Lord  Granville: — "Having  re- 
viewed the  whole  question,  the  result  has  been  that  I  see  no 
public  advantage  in  my  continuing  to  act  as  the  leader  of  the 
Liberal  Party;  and  that,  at  the  age  of  sixty-five,  and  after 
forty-two  years  of  a  laborious  public  life,  I  think  myself  en- 
titled to  retire  on  the  present  opportunity.  This  retirement 
is  dictated  to  me  by  my  personal  views  as  to  the  best  meth- 
od of  spending  the  closing  years  of  my  life. " 

The  Liberal  party  accepted  Mr.  Gladstone's  resignation  of 
the  leadership,  and  elected  Lord  Hartington,  afterwards  the 
Duke  of  Devonshire  in  his  place.  But  a  little  more  than  a 
year  had  elapsed  since  his  "final"  retirement  when  Mr.  Glad- 
stone came  forth  once  more. 

The  Public  Worships  Bill  attracted  his  attention,  and 
brought  forth  most  impressive  advocacy  in  the  direc- 
tion of  religious  toleration.  But  he  was  most  inten- 
sely concerned  by  the  Bulgarian  atrocities.  He  threw 
aside  polemics  and  criticism.  He  forgot  for  awhile,  Homer 
and  the  Pope,  as  he  flung  himself  with  all  the  impas- 
sioned energy  of  a  youth  into  a  new  crusade.  He,  whose 
keen  sense  of  justice  and  strong  humanitarian  sympathies 
had,  a  quarter  of  a  century  earlier,  made  Europe  ring  with 
the  story  of  the  Neapolitan  iniquities,  was  again  roused  to 
give  eloquent  expression  to  his  righteous  indignation.  Mr. 
G.  W.  E.  Russell  has  summed  up  the  reasons  for  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's action  in  a  most  eloquent  passage: — "The  reason  of 
all  this  passion  is  not  difficult  to  discover.  Mr.  Gladstone 
is  a  humane  man;  the  Turkish  tyranny  is  founded  on  cruelty. 


YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL    PROGRESS.  247 

He  is  a  worshipper  of  freedom ;  the  Turk  is  a  slave 
owner.  He  is  a  lover  of  peace;  the  Turk  is  nothing  if  not 
a  soldier.  He  is  a  disciple  of  progress;  the  Turkish  empire 
is  a  synonym  for  retrogression.  But  above  and  beyond  and 
before  all  else,  Mr.  Gladstone  is  a  Christian;  and  in  the 
Turk  he  saw  the  great  anti-Christian  power  standing,  where 
it  ought  not,  in  the  fairest  provinces  of  Christendom,  and 
stained  with  the  record  of  odious  cruelty,  practiced  through 
long  centuries  on  its  defenceless  subjects,  who  were  wor- 
shipers of  Jesus  Christ."  Mr.  Gladstone — his  reappear- 
ance among  them  being  loudly  cheered  by  his  followers — 
once  more  came  down  to  the  House,  to  learn  what  the  Min- 
isters in  power  meant  to  do  with  respect  to  the  Eastern 
Question. 

In  the  spring  of  the  year,  the  daily  press  had  been  filled 
with  accounts  of  the  terrible  cruelties  and  massacres  that 
were  taking  place  in  and  around  Bulgaria.  The  Govern- 
ment, however,  took  no  measures  to  interfere  with  the  bar- 
barous behaviour  of  our  Turkish  allies;  and  in  the  autumn 
Mr.  Gladstone — the  terrible  stories  of  the  atrocities,  which 
were  continued  on  during  the  summer,  having  been  amply 
verified— published  a  pamphlet  entitled  ' '  Bulgarian  Horrors 
and  the  Question  in  the  East. "  The  daily  papers  had  de- 
scribed many  of  the  atrocities  committed  in  a  wholesale 
manner  on  men,  women,  and  children  indiscriminately. 
The  pamphlet  brought  home  to  the  English  people  the  idea 
that  for  these  horrors  which  were  going  on,  they  too,  as 
non-interfering  allies  of  Turkey,  were  in  part  responsible. 

The  Government  took  no  definite  action,  and  were  get- 
ting rapidly  discredited.  Following  on  his  pamphlet, 
Mr.  Gladstone,  a  few  days  later,  addressed  a  mass  meeting 
of  his  constituents  at  Blackheath;  and  again  on  the  8th  of 
December,  he  spoke  at  a  great  gathering  which  was  held  in 
St.  James'  Hall  London.  Notable  men  of  all  ranks  were 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

present  to  give  expression  to  their  detestation  of  the  action 
of  Turkey. 

It  was  at  this  meeting  that  the  late  Professor  E.  A.  Free- 
man used  the  memorable  phrase,  ' '  Perish  the  interests  of 
England,  perish  our  dominion  in  India,  sooner  than  we 
should  strike  one  blow  or  speak  one  word  on  behalf  of  the 
wrong  against  the  right ! " 

In  the  House  of  Commons  Mr.  Gladstone  concluded  one 
of  his  grandest  speeches  in  these  burning  words  : 

Sir,  there  were  other  days  when  England  was  the  hope  of  freedom. 
Wherever  in  the  world  a  high  aspiration  was  entertained,  or  a  noble 
blow  was  struck,  it  was  to  England  that  the  eyes  of  the  oppressed 
were  always  turned — to  this  favorite,  this  darling  home  of  so  much 
privilege  and  so  much  happiness,  where  the  people  had  built  up  a 
noble  edifice  for  themselves,  would,  it  was  well  known,  be  ready  to 
do  what  in  them  lay  to  secure  the  benefit  of  the  same  inestimable 
boon  for  others.  You  talk  to  me  of  the  established  tradition  and 
policy  in  regard  to  Turkey.  I  appeal  to  an  established  tradition, 
older,  wider,  nobler  far — a  tradition  not  which  disregards  British 
interests,  but  which  teaches  you  to  seek  the  promotion  of  these  inter- 
ests in  obeying  the  dictates  of  honor  and  justice.  And,  sir,  what  is  to 
be  the  end  of  this  ?  Are  we  to  dress  up  the  fantastic  ideas  some 
people  entertain  about  this  policy  and  that  policy  in  the  garb  of 
British  interests,  and  then,  with  a  new  and  base  idolatry,  fall  down 
and  worship  them  ?  Or  are  we  to  look,  not  at  the  sentiment,  but  at 
the  hard  facts  of  the  case,  which  Lord  Derby  told  us  fifteen  years 
ago — viz. ,  that  it  is  the  populations  of  those  countries  that  will  ulti- 
mately possess  them — that  will  ultimately  determine  their  abiding 
condition  ?  It  is  to  this  fact,  this  law,  that  we  should  look.  There 
is  now  before  the  world  a  glorious  prize.  A  portion  of  those  unhappy 
people  are  still  as  yet,  making  an  effort  to  retrieve  what  they  have  lost 
so  long,  but  have  not  ceased  to  love  and  to  desire.  I  speak  of  those 
in  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina.  Another  portion — a  band  of  heroes  such 
as  the  world  has  rarely  seen — stand  on  the  rocks  of  Montenegro,  and 
are  ready  now,  as  they  have  ever  been  during  the  400  years  of  their 
exile  from  their  fertile  plains,  to  sweep  down  from  their  fastnesses 
and  meet  the  Turks  at  any  odds  for  the  re-establishment  of  justice 
and  of  peace  in  those  countries.  Another  portion  still,  the  5,000,000 
of  Bulgarians,  cowed  and  beaten  down  to  the  ground,  hardly  ventur- 
ing to  look  upward,  even  to  their  Father  in  heaven,  have  extended 
their  hands  to  you  ;  they  have  sent  you  their  petition,  they  have 
prayed  for  your  help  and  protection.  They  have  told  you  that  they 


YEARS    OF    WONDERFUL    PROGRESS.  249 

do  not  seek  alliance  with  Russia,  or  with  any  foreign  power,  but  that 
they  seek  to  be  delivered  from  an  intolerable  burden  of  woe  and 
shame.  That  burden  of  woe  and  shame — the  greatest  that  exists  on 
God's  earth — is  one  that  we  thought  united  Europe  was  about  to 
remove  ;  but  to  the  removing  which,  for  the  present,  you  seem  to  have 
no  efficacious  means  of  offering  even  the  smallest  practical  contribu- 
tion. But,  sir,  the  removal  of  that  load  of  woe  and  shame  is  a 
grand  and  noble  prize.  It  is  a  prize  well  worth  competing  for.  It  is 
not  yet  too  late  to  try  to  win  it.  I  believe  there  are  men  in  the  Cabi- 
net who  would  try  to  win  it  if  they  were  free  to  act  on  their  own 
beliefs  and  aspirations.  It  is  not  yet  too  late,  I  say  to  become  com- 
petitors for  that  prize  ;  but  be  assured  that  even  whether  you  mean 
to  claim  for  yourselves  even  a  single  leaf  in  that  immortal  chaplet  of 
renown,  which  will  be  the  reward  of  true  labor  in  that  cause,  or 
whether  you  turn  your  backs  upon  that  cause  and  upon  your  own 
duty,  I  believe,  for  one,  that  the  knell  of  Turkish  tyranny  in  these 
provinces  has  sounded.  So  far  as  human  eye  can  judge,  it  is  about 
to  be  destroyed.  The  destruction  may  not  come  in  the  way  or  by 
the  means  that  we  should  choose  ;  but  come  this  boon  from  what 
hands  it  may,  it  will  be  a  noble  boon,  and  as  a  noble  boon  will 
gladly  be  accepted  by  Christendom  and  the  world. 

Meetings  were  addressed  by  Mr.  Gladstone  all  over  the 
country;  a  new  lease  of  youth  seemed  to  have  been  allotted 
to  him,  his  fervor  and  his  energy  alike  seeming  inex- 
haustible. 

During  1877-78  the  Russo-Turkish  war  took  place;  and 
in  July  of  the  latter  year  the  celebrated  Berlin  Conference 
met.  Returning  from  the  Conference,  Benjamin  Disraeli 
then  Earl  of  Beaconsfield  and  Lord  Salisbury,  were  hailed  in 
London  with  every  demonstration  of  enthusiasm.  The 
"jingo"  policy,  as  it  was  called,  had  asserted  itself,  and 
had  undoubtedly  taken  the  public  fancy.  So  much  so  that 
for  a  time,  despite  his  energetic  action  on  behalf  of  suf- 
fering and  oppressed  peoples,  despite  his  long  years  of 
noble  service  in  the  cause  of  reform,  Mr.  Gladstone  was 
discredited  and  unpopular.  His  time  of  triumph,  however, 
was  not  far  off. 

The  Afghan  and  Zulu  wars  broke  out,  and  Parliament 
was  called  upon  to  vote  $32,000,000  to  defray  the  cost. 


250  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

The  budgets  of  1878  and  1879  both  showed  large  deficits, 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  when  Mr.  Gladstone's  Min- 
istry left  office,  there  had  been  a  surplus  of  over  fiiteen 
millions.  The  people  who  had  applauded  the  ' '  imperial 
policy,"  the  "jingoism"  of  the  preceding  two  or  three 
years,  did  not  appreciate  it  so  well  when  they  found  it  was 
so  costly  a  one.  Business,  too,  was  in  a  very  depressed 
condition.  The  fate  of  unpopularity  which  had  grown  upon 
the  Liberal  Government,  and  had  culminated  in  its  defeat 
in  1873,  was  now  growing  upon  their  opponents;  as  in 
1879  the  term  of  their  office  tenure,  was  drawing  to  its 
close. 

Gladstone  was  once  more,  in  every  sense  of  the  word, 
the  Liberal  leader,  and  was  taking  as  active  a  part  as  ever 
in  Parliamentary  business.  He  decided  to  contest  the 
election  for  Midlothian.  Never  in  the  history  of  modern 
times  has  such  a  reception  been  accorded  to  any  man  as  that 
which  he  met  on  visiting  the  North.  When  he  reached 
Edinburgh,  ' '  his  progress  was  as  the  progress  of  a  nation's 
guest  or  a  king  returning  to  his  own  again. "  For  three 
weeks  he  delivered  speeches  all  over  the  constituency,  being 
received  everywhere  with  most  extraordinary  demonstra- 
tions of  -good-will  and  admiration  from  thousands  of  per- 
sons. ' '  Being  a  man  of  Scotch  blood,  I  am  very  much 
attached  to  Scotland,  and  like  even  the  Scottish  accent," 
Mr.  Gladstone  once  said;  and  Scotland  showed  herself 
equally  proud  of  her  son.  Although  Midlothian  had  been 
one  of  the  Conservative  strongholds,  Mr.  Gladstone  won  it 
by  a  majority  of  211  against  the  son  of  the  Duke  of 
Buccleugh.  The  result  of  the  general  election  was  a  return 
of  the  Liberals  to  powrer  with  a  considerable  majority. 

Lord  Beaconsfield  followed  the  precedent  he  had  himself 
set  in  1868,  and  resigned  before  meeting  Parliament.  As 
Lord  Hartington  was  at  the  time  titular  leader  of  the  Lib- 
eral party,  Mr.  Gladstone  being  still  technically  in  retire- 


YEAES   OF   WONDERFUL   PROGRESS.  251 

inent,  the  Queen  sent  for  Lord  Hartington,  but  it  was  man- 
ifest that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  the  only  available,  indeed  the 
only  possible  Prime  Minister.  The  country  demanded  him. 
The  old  popularity  came  back  with  increased  volume.  The 
"People's  William"  was  now  beginning  to  be  regarded  as 
the  " Grand  Old  Man."  Both  Lord  Granville  and  Lord 
Hartington  assured  Her  Majesty  that  there  was  no  other 
course  but  to  recall  Mr.  Gladstone  to  power.  The  royal 
summons  came,  Mr.  Gladstone  went  down  to  Windsor,  re- 
ceived the  royal  mandate,  kissed  the  royal  hand,  and  came 
back  to  take  a  second  time  the  helm  of  state,  and  lead  the 
nation  that  now  almost  idolized  him,  in  an  upward  and  an 
onward  course. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

HOME    RULE. 

"  A  soul  as  full  of  worth,  as  void  of  pride, 
Which  nothing  seeks  to  show,  or  needs  to  hide, 
Which  nor  to  guilt  nor  fear  its  caution  owes, 
And  boasts  a  warmth  that  from  no  passion  flows. 
A  face  untaught  to  feign;  a  judging  eye 
That  darts  severe  upon  a  rising  lie, 
And  strikes  a  blush  through  frontless  flattery. 
All  this  thou  wert  " 

— A  lexander  Pope. 

Surely  the  love  of  our  country  is  a  lesson  of  reason,  not  an  insti- 
tution of  nature.  Education  and  habit,  obligation  and  interest, 
attach  us  to  it,  not  instinct.  It  is,  however,  necessary  to  be  cultivated, 
and  the  prosperity  of  all  societies,  as  well  as  the  grandeur  of 'some, 
depends  upon  it  so  much,  that  orators  by  their  eloquence,  and  poets 
by  their  enthusiasm,  have  endeavored  to  work  up  this  precept  of 
morality  into  a  principle  of  passion.  But  the  examples  which  we 
find  in  history,  improved  by  the  lively  descriptions  and  the  just  ap- 
plauses or  censures  of  historians,  will  have  a  much  better  and  more 
permanent  effect  than  declamation,  or  song,  or  the  dry  ethics  of  mere 
philosophy. 

— Lord  JBolingbroke. 

The  Parliament  of  1880-1885  opened  full  of  promise. 

When  the  Ministry  was  completed,  the  list  presented  an 
appearance  of  strength  and  stability  that  promised  a  long, 
honorable  and  useful  career.  Lord  Granville  and  Lord 
Hartington,  cordially  accepting  the  situation,  resumed  their 
allegiance  to  their  former  chief,  the  one  serving  the  new 
Ministry  as  Foreign  Secretary,  the  other  as  Secretary  of 
State  for  India.  Mr.  Gladstone  coupled  with  the  office  of 
First  Lord  of  the  Treasury  the  duties  of  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer.  Sir  William  Harcourt,  preferring  not  to  pur- 
sue the  pathway  opened  for  him  when  he  was  made  a  Law 

252 


HOME    RULE.  253 

Officer  of  the  Crown,  became  Home  Secretary.  Mr.  Child- 
ers  was  Secretary  for  War.  Lord  Kimberley  cared  for  the 
Colonies.  Lord  Northbrook  was  First  Lord  of  the  Ad- 
miralty. Mr.  Forster  was  Chief  Secretary  for  Ireland. 
The  Earl  of  Selborne  presided  in  the  House  of  Lords  as 
Lord  Chancellor.  Earl  Spencer  was  Lord  President  of  the 
Council.  The  Duke  of  Argyll  and  Mr.  Bright  divided  be- 
tween them  the  posts  of  Lord  Privy  Seal  and  Chancellor  of 
the  Duchy  of  Lancaster,  whose  importance  arose  almost  ex- 
clusively from  the  fact  that  they  carried  with  them  seats  in 
the  Cabinet. 

In  this  Parliament  at  the  opening  of  the  session  of  1881, 
a  Home  Rule  Party  appeared,  composed  of  sixty-one  mem- 
bers, with  Charles  Stuart  Parnell  at  its  head.  He  had  been 
in  Parliament  since  1875,  and  had  acquired  a  thorough  po- 
litical education.  Such  a  leader,  with  more  than  three- 
score determined  men  at  his  back,  formed  a  very  serious 
contingent.  They  were  men  of  one  idea  mainly,  and  while 
they  were  generally  in  harmony  with  the  Liberal  party  and 
its  principles,  they  set  before  themselves  the  attainment  of 
Home  Rule  for  Ireland,  as  the  only  cure  for  her  manifold 
wrongs  and  sorrows.  Under  the  inspiration  of  Mr.  Parnell 
the  Irish  Land  League  became  established,  which  assumed 
the  form  of  a  powerful  trade  union  of  the  tenant  farmers, 
which  Mr.  Michael  Davitt  had  been  very  diligent  in  promot- 
ing. For  a  time  government  took  no  notice  of  the  Irish 
party,  but  Mr  Parnell  with  his  colleague,  Mr.  Biggar, 
sought  to  force  attention  to  the  great  Irish  question  by  a 
policy  of  obstruction.  At  the  opening  of  Parliament  in 
January,  1881,  it  was  found  that  the  Irish  Party  could  no 
longer  be  ignored.  The  condition  of  Ireland  was  growing 
more  and  more  distressing.  Suffering,  want  and  oppression 
bred,  as  they  always  do,  hatred,  resentment  and  rebellion. 

The  winter  was  a  black  one  in  Ireland.  The  class  of  land- 
Lords  who  had  swelled  the  list  of  evictions,  finding  them- 


254  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

selves  sustained  by  the  action  of  the  Lords,  ran  tham  up 
with  freer  hand.  By  the  end  of  the  year,  there  was  record 
of  2,110  families  turned  out  on  the  roadside.  The  Land 
League,  growing  in  numbers  and  in  power,  held  meetings 
all  over  the  country,  advising  tenants  whose  rents  were  fixed 
above  Griffith's  valuation,  to  pay  no  rent  and  passively  re- 
sist eviction.  Attention  was  concentrated  on  the  case  of 
Captain  Boycott,  agent  of  Lord  Erne,  farming  a  considera- 
ble acreage  at  Lough  Mask.  He  having  served  notices 
upon  some  of  Lord  Erne's  tenants,  the  countryside,  with 
one  consent,  agreed  it  would  hold  no  communication  with 
him.  None  would  work  for  him.  None  would  sell  him 
food  or  fetch  him  water.  The  Ulster  Orangemen  responded 
to  his  cry  for  help  by  despatching  a  body  of  armed  men  to 
gather  in  his  imperilled  harvest.  The  unhappy  Chief  Sec- 
retary apprehending  disturbance  when  the  emergency  men 
came  within  pistol  shot  of  the  peasants  of  Connemara, 
hastily  despatched  a  small  army  to  keep  the  peace.  A  blow 
was  struck  in  another  direction,  the  officials  of  the  Land 
League  being  indicted  for  seditious  conspiracy.  Amongst 
those  who  stood  in  the  dock  on  this  charge  were  Mr.  Par- 
nell,  Mr.  Dillon,  Mr.  T  D.  Sullivan,  Mr.  Sexton,  and  Mr. 
Biggar,  all  members  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  jury, 
as  might  have  been  expected,  did  not  agree  on  a  verdict, 
and  amidst  the  huzzas  of  the  Dublin  populace,  the  prisoners 
were  set  free. 

A  winter  of  such  discontent  was  not  a  harbinger  of  peace 
in  the  spring.  Parliament  was  summoned  to  meet  on  the 
6th  of  January,  an  unusually  early  date.  Of  two  measures 
in  a  long  list,  upon  which  attention  was  chiefly  centered,  both 
related  to  Ireland.  One  was  a  new  Coercion  bill,  the  other 
a  Land  bill,  a  nicely  balancing  arrangement  which  the  fatal- 
ity that  seemed  to  dog  the  steps  of  the  government,  suc- 
ceeded in  enraging  both  sections  of  the  Opposition.  Mr. 
Gladstone  announced  that  priority  should  be  given  to  the 


HOME    RULE.  255 

Coercion  measures,  which  were  divided  into  two  bills,  one 
1 '  For  the  Better  Protection  of  Persons  and  Property  in  Ire- 
land," the  other  Amending  the  Law  relating  to  the  Carrying 
and  Possession  of  Arms.  On  Monday,  the  24th  January, 
Mr.  Forster  introduced  the  Coercion  measure,  which  he  stu- 
diously called  the  Protection  Bill.  On  the  next  day  Mr. 
Gladstone  moved  a  resolution  giving  priority  to  the  bill  till 
it  should  have  passed  all  its  stages.  The  resolution  was  carried 
by  251  votes  against  33,  a  conclusion  arrived  at  only  at  the 
close  of  a  sitting  that  had  lasted  uninterruptedly  for  twenty- 
two  hours,  in  the  course  of  which  Mr.  Biggar  succeeded  in 
getting  himself  suspended  under  the  new  rules  of  procedure 

It  was  the  purpose  of  this  Coercion  Bill  to  put  down  with 
a  strong  hand  all  those  who  were  disturbing  the  peace  of 
Ireland.  It  was  a- formidable  measure,  it  practically  sus- 
pended the  liberties  of  Ireland.  The  Irish  Party  resisted 
the  passing  of  the  Bill  by  every  conceivable  method  of 
obstruction.  This  ended  in  the  famous  suspension  of  the 
Thirty-Seven  Members,  a  page  in  Parliamentary  history 
that  is  to  be  most  seriously  regretted. 

On  the  25th  of  February,  1881,  the  Coercion  Bill  was 
passed,  and  on  the  7th  of  April,  Mr.  Gladstone  introduced 
his  Land  Bill  which  was  offered  as  a  measure  of  concilia- 
tion. The  bill  contained  the  novel  and  far-reaching  feature 
of  the  State  stepping  in  between  landlord  and  tenant  and 
fixing  the  rents.  It  was,  notwithstanding  some  defects,  the 
greatest  measure  of  land  reform  ever  passed  by  the  Im 
perial  Parliament.  The  act  was  to  be  administered  by  Land 
Commissioners  appointed  by  the  Government.  The  Irish 
members  had  no  confidence  in  the  Commissioners.  They  said 
they  would  belong  almost  entirely  to  the  landlord  class  and 
would  defeat  the  purposes  of  the  act. 

Speaking  at  Leeds  on  the  7th  October,  1881,  Mr.  Glad- 
stone uttered  an  ominous  warning.  "I  have,"  he  said, 
' '  not  lost  confidence  in  the  people  of  Ireland.  The  progress 


256  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

they  have  made  in  many  points  is  to  me  a  proof  that  we 
ought  to  rely  upon  them.  But  they  have  dangers  and 
temptations  and  seductions  offered  to  them  such  as  never 
were  before  presented  to  a  people,  and  the  trial  of  their 
virtue  is  severe.  Nevertheless,  they  will  have  to  go 
through  that  trial ;  we  have  endeavored  to  pay  them  the 
debt  of  justice,  and  of  liberal  justice.  We  have  no  reason 
to  believe  they  do  not  acknowledge  it.  We  wish  they  may 
have  the  courage  to  acknowledge  it  manfully  and  openly, 
and  to  repudiate,  as  they  ought  to  repudiate,  the  evil  coun- 
sels with  which  it  is  sought  to  seduce  them  from  the  path  of 
duty  and  of  right,  as  well  as  of  public  law  and  of  public 
order.  We  are  convinced  that  the  Irish  nation  desires  to 
take  full  and  free  advantage  of  the  Land  Act.  But  Mr. 
Parnell  says:  'No,  you  must  wait  until  'I  have  submitted 
cases  ;  until  I  tell  you  whether  the  court  that  Parliament 
has  established  can  be  trusted.  '  Trusted  for  what  ?  Trusted 
to  reduce  what  he  says  is  seventeen  millions  a  year  of 
property,  to  three  millions  which  he  graciously  allows. 
And  when  he  finds  it  is  not  to  be  trusted  for  that — and  I 
hope  in  God  it  is  not  to  be  trusted  for  any  such  purpose — 
then  he  will  endeavor  to  work  his  will  by  attempting  to  pro- 
cure for  the  Irish  people  the  repeal  of  the  Act.  But  in  the 
meantime  what  says  he  \  That  until  he  has  submitted  his 
test  cases  any  farmer  who  pays  his  rent  is  a  fool — a  danger- 
ous denunciation  in  Ireland,  a  dangerous  thing  to  be  de- 
nounced as  a  fool  by  a  man  who  has  made  himself  the  head 
of  the  most  violent  party  in  Ireland,  and  who  has  offered 
the  greatest  temptations  to  the  Irish  people.  That  is  no 
small  matter.  He  desires  to  arrest  the  operation  of  the 
Act,  to  stand  as  Aaron  stood,  between  the  living  and  the 
dead ;  but  to  stand  there,  not  as  Aaron  stood,  to  arrest,  but 
to  spread  the  plague. 

"These  opinions  are  called  forth  by  the  grave  state  of  the 
facts.     I  do  not  give  them  to  you  as  anything  more,  but 


ME.  GLADSTONE  ADDRESSING  His  CABINET. 


HOME    RULE.  257 

they  are  opinions  sustained  by  reference  to  words  and  to 
actions.  They  all  have  regard  to  this  great  impending 
crisis  in  which  we  depend  upon  the  good  sense  of  the  people, 
and  in  which  we  are  determined  that  no  force,  and  no  fear 
of  force,  and  no  fear  of  ruin  through  force,  shall,  so  far  as 
we  are  concerned,  and  as  it  is  in  our  power  to  decide  the 
question,  prevent  the  Irish  people  from  having  the  full  and 
free  benefit  of  the  Land  Act.  But  if,  when  we  have  that 
short  further  experience  to  which  I  have  referred,  it  shall 
then  appear  that  there  is  still  to  be  fought  a  final  conflict 
in  Ireland,  between  law  on  one  side  and  sheer  lawlessness 
on  the  other.  If  the  law,  purged  from  defect  and  from  any 
taint  of  injustice,  is  still  to  be  repelled  and  refused,  and  the 
first  conditions  of  political  society  are  to  be  set  at  nought, 
then  I  say  with  out  hesitation  that  the  resources  of  civilization 
against  its  enemies  are  not  yet  exhausted.  I  shall  recog- 
nize  in  full,  when  the  facts  are  ripe — and  there  ripeness  is 
approaching — the  duty  and  responsibility  of  the  Govern- 
ment. I  call  upon  all  orders  and  degrees  of  men,  not  in 
these  two  kingdoms,  but  in  these  three,  to  support  the 
Government  in  the  discharge  of  its  duty  and  in  acquitting 
itself  of  that  responsibility.  I,  for  one,  in  that  state  of 
facts,  relying  upon  my  fellow-countrymen  in  these  three 
nations  associated  together,  have  not  a  doubt  of  the 
results." 

Mr.  Parnell  replied  at  Wexford  in  a  defiant  speech,  in 
which  he  characterized  Mr.  Gladstone's  remarks  as  "un- 
scrupulous and  dishonest. "  The  Irish  people,  he  declared, 
would  not  rest  or  relax  their  efforts  till  they  had  regained 
their  lost  legislative  independence. 

Swift  on  these  two  speeches  fell  a  heavy  blow.  On  the 
13th  of  October,  Mr.  Parnell  was  arrested  in  Dublin, 
and  carried  off  to  Kilmainham.  Mr.  John  Dillon,  Mr.  Sex- 
ton and  Mr.  O'Kelly,  members  of  Parliament,  were  also 
lodged  in  Kilmainham  with  the  chief  officials  of  the  League. 


258  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Mr.  Egan,  the  Treasurer  of  the  League,  fled  to  Paris.  Mr. 
Biggar  and  other  Irish  members  escaped  the  fate  of  their 
colleagues  by  keeping  out  of  Ireland. 

When  the  House  of  Commons  met  for  the  Session  of 
1882,  the  Irish  Leader  and  some  of  his  principal  lieutenants 
were  still  in  Kilmainham.  Coercion  was  in  full  swing.  In 
April  it  was  stated  in  the  House  of  Commons  that  Mr.  For- 
ster  had  under  lock  and  key  not  less  than  six  hundred 
persons,  imprisoned  under  the  Coercion  Acts,  Ireland,  its 
rights  and  its  wrongs,  blazed  up  fiercely  night  after  night. 

Mr.  Forster  resigned  the  post  of  Chief  Secretary  for  Ire- 
land. Mr.  Gladstone  appointed  Lord  Frederick  Cavendish 
to  succeed  him.  Mr.  Lucy  tells  in  his  own  graphic  way  the 
story  of  the  sad  tragedy  that  followed: 

On  Saturday  morning,  the  6th  of  May,  Lord  Frederick 
arrived  in  Dublin  to  assume  his  new  duties.  Late  that 
evening  the  Marquis  of  Hartington,  present  at  a  party  given 
at  the  Admiralty  to  meet  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Edin- 
burgh, was  taken  aside  by  a  colleague  in  the  Cabinet  and 
told  that  his  brother  had  been  murdered.  Walking  to  the 
Viceregal  Lodge  in  company  with  Mr.  Burke,  after  taking 
part  in  the  State  entry  of  the  new  Viceroy,  Earl  Spencer, 
Lord  Frederick  was  faljen  upon  by  a  gang  of  men  and 
stabbed  in  the  chest.  It  was  a  fair  summer  evening,  so 
light  that  Lord  Spencer,  standing  at  the  window  of  the  Vice- 
regal Lodge,  saw  what  he  afterwards  knew  to  have  been  the 
death-struggle.  Some  boys  on  bicycles,  passing  down  the 
broad  highway,  saw  the  two  gentlemen  walking  and  talking 
together.  Returning  after  a  spin,  they  found  them  lying 
side  by  side  on  the  pathway,  Mr.  Burke  stabbed  to  the 
heart,  Lord  Frederick  with  a  knife  through  his  right  lung. 

This  outrage  upon  the  person  of  an  inoffensive  man,  who 
had  gone  over  to  Ireland  carrying  the  olive-leaf  of  peace, 
created  a  profound  sensation.  Mr.  Parnell  took  the  earliest 
opportunity  of  expressing  in  the  House  of  Commons,  on  the 


LORD  SALISBURY  ADDRESSING  THE  HOUSE  OF  LORDS. 


HOME    RULE.  259 

part  of  his  friends  and  himself,  and,  he  believed,  on  the 
part  of  every  Irishman  throughout  the  world,  his  detesta- 
tion of  the  horrible  crime  committed.  Some  years  later  Mr. 
Gladstone  incidentally  mentioned  that  the  Irish  leader  had 
privately  written  to  him,  offering,  if  he  thought  it  would  be 
useful,  to  retire  from  public  life.  In  the  temper  of  the 
House  and  the  country  there  was  no  difficulty  in  hurrying 
through  Parliament  a  fresh  and  more  stringent  Coercion 
Bill. 

On  the  13th  of  May,  1885,  the  government  announced 
their  intention  to  renew  the  Spencer-Trevelyan  coercion  act. 
On  the  8th  of  June  the  opportunity  of  the  Parnellites 
arrived.  In  alliance  with  the  Tories  they  defeated  the  gov- 
ernment on  one  of  the  resolutions  of  the  budget. 

Mr.  Gladstone  resigned  and  was  succeeded  by  Lord  Salis- 
bury. But  the  government  of  Lord  Salisbury  expired 
after  an  existence  of  only  eight  months.  Mr.  Gladstone 
was  sent  for  by  the  Queen,  and  for  the  third  time  he  became 
Prime  Minister  of  England. 

On  the  8th  of  April  the  Grand  Old  Man,  now  in  his  sev- 
enty-seventh year,  introduced,  in  a  speech  of  three  hours' 
duration,  his  Home  Rule  Bill.  At  the  close  of  his  masterly 
speech  friends  and  foes  alike  expressed  their  profound 
admiration  of  the  masterly  way  in  which  he  set  forth  the 
provisions  of  the  bill.  Many  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  old-time 
followers  deserted  him  because  of  the  concessions  he  made 
to  the  Irish  party. 

On  his  defeat,  the  Premier  advised  the  Queen  to  dissolve 
Parliament,  and  though  her  Majesty  demurred  to  the 
trouble  of  another  general  election  so  soon  after  the  last, 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  his  way,  and  Parliament  was  dissolved 
on  June  26th. 

The  result  of  the  "  appeal  to  the  country"  was  the  return 
of  a  decided  majority  against  Home  Rule  ;  and  thus,  after  a 
short  term  of  five  months  in  power,  Mr.  Gladstone  found 


260  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

his  third  Premiership  at  an  end  and  himself,  once  more  the 
leader  of  the  opposition.  Conscious  of  the  fact  that  no 
great  reform  had  been  inaugurated  on  a  first  attempt,  he 
thenceforward  dedicated  all  his  energies  to  the  furthering 
of  the  Home  Rule  cause.  The  same  autumn,  before  leaving 
England  for  a  holiday  rest  on  the  Continent,  he  issued  a 
pamphlet  on  the  Home  Rule  question,  dividing  it  into  two 
sections,  called  respectively  "History  of  an  Idea"  and 
"Lessons  of  the  Elections."  In  May  he  had  issued  in  the 
form  of  an  address  to  the  electors  of  Midlothian  a  manifesto, 
declaring  the  reasons  which  had  induced  him  to  espouse  the 
cause  of  Home  Rule  for  Ireland. 

In  November,  1890,  a  great  disaster  occurred  to  the  Irish 
party.  Its  leader,  Mr.  Parnell,  by  a  set  of  circumstances 
of  which  we  do  not  desire  to  enter  into  detail,  lost  his  hold 
upon  his  followers.  Before  the  clean  moral  sense  of  Mr. 
Gladstone,  it  seemed  that  the  only  course  before  Mr.  Par- 
nell was  to  retire.  He  wrote  a  letter  to  Mr.  Morley,  which 
was  intended  to  be  private,  but  which,  fortunately  or  un- 
fortunately, as  the  case  may  be,  became  public.  So  much 
has  been  said  about  this  letter  that  we  deem  it  desirable  to 
insert  it  in  this  place  : 

"1,  CARLTON  GARDENS,  Nov.  24,  1890. 

"My  DEAR  MORLEY, — Having-  arrived  at  a  certain  conclusion 
with  regard  to  the  continuance  at  the  present  moment  of  Mr.  Par- 
nell's  leadership  of  the  Irish  party,  I  have  seen  Mr.  McCarthy  on  my 
arrival  in  town,  and  have  inquired  from  him  whether  I  was  likely  to 
receive  from  Mr.  Parnell  himself  any  communication  on  the  subject. 
Mr.  McCarthy  replied  that  he  was  unable  to  give  me  any  communica- 
tion on  the  subject.  I  mentioned  to  him  that  in  1882,  after  the  terri- 
ble murder  in  Phcenix  Park,  Mr.  Parnell,  although  totally  removed 
from  any  idea  of  responsibility,  had  spontaneously  written  to  me  and 
offered  to  take  the  Chiltern  Hundreds,  an  offer  much  to  his  honor, 
but  one  which  I  thought  it  my  duty  to  decline. 

"While  clinging  to  the  hope  of  a  communication  from  Mr  Par- 
nell to  whomsoever  addressed,  I  thought  it  necessary,  viewing  the 
arrangements  for  the  coir.mencement  of  the  Session  to-morrow,  to 
acquaint  Mr.  McCarthy  of  the  conclusion  at  which,  after  using  all  the 
means  of  observation  and  reflection  in  my  power,  I  had  myself 


HOME    RULE.  261 

arrived.  It  was  that,  notwithstanding  the  splendid  services  rendered 
by  Mr.  Parnell  to  his  country,  his  continuance  at  the  present  moment 
in  the  leadership  would  be  productive  of  consequences  disastrous  in 
the  highest  degree  to  the  cause  of  Ireland.  I  think  I  may  be  war- 
ranted in  asking  you  so  far  to  explain  the  conclusion  I  have  given 
above  as  to  add  that  the  continuance  which  I  speak  of  would  not  only 
place  many  hearty  and  effective  friends  of  the  Irish  cause  in  a  posi- 
tion of  great  embarrassment,  but  would  render  my  retention  of  the 
leadership  of  the  Liberal  party,  based  as  it  has  been  mainly  upon  the 
prosecution  of  the  Irish  cause,  almost  a  nullity. 

"This  explanation  of  my  own  view  I  begged  Mr.  McCarthy  to 
regard  as  confidential,  and  not  intended  for  his  colleagues  generally, 
if  he  found  that  Mr.  Parnell  contemplated  spontaneous  action.  But 
I  also  begged  that  he  would  make  known  to  the  Irish  party  at  their 
meeting  to-morrow  afternoon,  that  such  was  my  conclusion  if  he 
should  find  that  Mr.  Parnell  had  not  in  contemplation  any  step  of 
the  nature  indicated. 

"  I  now  write  to  you  in  case  Mr.  McCarthy  should  be  unable  to 
communicate  with  Mr.  Parnell,  as  I  understand  you  may  possibly 
have  an  opening  to-morrow  through  another  channel.  Should  you 
have  such  an  opening  I  would  beg  you  to  make  known,  to  Mr.  Parnell 
the  conclusion  itself,  which  I  have  stated  in  the  earlier  part  of  this 
letter.  I  have  thought  it  best  to  put  it  in  terms  simple  and  direct, 
much  as  I  should  have  desired  had  it  been  within  my  power  to  alleviate 
the  painful  nature  of  the  situation.  As  respects  the  manner  of  con- 
veying what  my  public  duty  has  made  it  an  obligation  to  say,  1  rely 
entirely  on  your  good  feeling,  tact,  and  judgment." 

On  the  28th  of  June,  1892,  Parliament  was  once  more 
dissolved,  and  Mr.  Gladstone,  octogenarian  though  he  was, 
entered  on  that  marvelous  Midlothian  campaign — a  record 
of  which  will  be  found  in  the  next  chapter — which  ranks 
rfmong  the  most .  remarkable  campaigns  of  his  long,  illus- 
trious life.  It  was  a  grand,  winning  fight  all  along  the 
Liberal  lines.  The  election  went  against  the  Conservatives, 
who  were  able  to  return  only  269  members.  The  Liberal- 
Unionists  were  now  reduced  to  46  representatives.  The 
Liberals  elected  274  members,  and  the  Home  Eulers  81, 
making  a  total  in  this  combination  of  355,  or  a  majority 
against  the  existing  moribund  government. 

On  the  5th  of  August  a  new  Parliament  was  opened. 
The  Conservative  ministers  had  not  resigned.  On  the  reply 


262  LIFE   OF   GLADSTONE. 

to  the  address  from  the  throne  a  vote  of  no  confidence  was 
moved  from  the  Liberal  benches.  The  motion  was  debated 
three  days,  and  finally  carried  by  a  majority  of  forty.  Thus 
ended  the  Salisbury  ministry.  Parliament  was  prorogued 
till  the  1st  of  February,  1893.  On  the  13th  of  February 
Mr.  Gladstone — for  the  fourth  time  Prime  Minister  of  Eng- 
land— brought  in  his  second  Home  Rule  Bill,  a  complete 
copy  of  which  will  be  found  later  on. 

The  streets  leading  to  the  House  of  Commons  were 
crowded  with  hundreds  of  persons  anxious  to  get  a  glimpse 
of  the  Prime  Minister  on  his  way  to  the  scene  of  so  many 
former  oratorical  triumphs.  As  his  carriage  drove  to  the 
House,  he  was  greeted  with  great  enthusiasm  and  lusty 
cheers,  which  were  echoed,  as  he  walked  up  the  floor  of  the 
House,  by  the  close  throng  of  members. 

At  a  quarter  to  four  Mr.  Gladstone  rose,  and  after  re- 
minding the  House  that  for  seven  years  the  voices  which 
used  to  plead  the  cause  of  Irish  government  in  Irish  affairs, 
had  been  mute  within  the  walls  of  the  House,  he  proceeded 
to  outline  the  main  points  of  the  scheme  embodied  in  the 
Bill  which  he  was  asking  leave  to  introduce.  The  much- 
debated  subject  as  to  whether  Ireland,  if  granted  a  parlia- 
ment of  its  own,  was  to  continue  to  send  representatives  to 
Westminster,  is  to  be  solved  by  its  sending  eighty  members 
with  power  to  vote  only  on  matters  of  Imperial  interest  or 
matters  affecting  Ireland.  The  "five  propositions"  of  the 
Bill  were  summed  up  by  Mr.  Gladstone  thus  : 

"First,  then,  Imperial  unity  was  to  be  observed.  Sec- 
ondly, the  equality  of  all  the  kingdoms  was  to  be  borne  in 
mind.  Thirdly,  there  was  to  be  an  equitable  repartition  of 
Imperial  charges.  Fourthly,  any  and  every  practicable 
provision  for  the  protection  of  minorities  was  to  be  adopted. 
And,  fifthly,  the  plan  that  was  to  be  proposed  was  to  be 
such  as,  at  least  in  the  judgment  of  its  promoters,  presented 
the  necessary  characteristics — I  will  not  say  finality,  because 


HOME    RULE.  263 

it  is  a  discredited  word — but  of  a  real  and  continuing  set- 

c? 

tlement.  That  is  the  basis  on  which  we  continue  to 
stand. " 

Then  for  two  and  a  quarter  hours  did  the  Premier  unfold 
in  detail  such  parts  of  the  scheme  as  time  allowed,  and  as 
could  be  explained  in  a  speech.  Never  before  had  the 
House  of  Commons  had  a  Prime  Minister  over  eighty-three 
years  of  age,  to  deliver  a  two  hours'  speech  advocating  a  new 
legislation.  And  yet  the  orator,  who  sixty  years  earlier, 
had  first  exercised  his  gifts  in  the  House,  delivered  his  latest 
speech  with  all  his  old  fire  and  verve,  making  it  hard  for  his 
hearers  to  realize  his  great  age.  This  unique  oration  ended 
with  these  appealing  words  : 

"It  would  be  a  misery  to  me  if  I  had  forgotten  or  omitted 
in  these  my  closing  years,  any  -measure  possible  for  me  to 
take  towards  upholding  and  promoting  the  cause,  which  I 
believe  to  be  the  cause,  not  of  one  party  or  another,  of  one 
nation  or  another,  but  of  all  parties  and  of  all  nations  in- 
habiting these  islands;  and  to  these  nations,  viewing  them 
as  I  do,  with  all  their  vast  opportunities  under  a  living 
union  for  power  and  for  happiness,  I  do  entreat  you — if  it 
were  with  my  latest  breath  I  would  entreat  you — to  let  the 
dead  bury  the  dead,  and  to  cast  behind  you  every  recollec- 
tion of  bygone  evils,  and  to  cherish  and  love  and  sustain  one 
another  through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  human  affairs  in  the 

O 

times  that  are  to  come." 

The  time  for  laying  down  the  great  burden  was  at  hand. 
His  evesight  began  to  fail,  and  on  the  3rd  of  March  he  and 

«/  O  O 

Mrs.  Gladstone  went  down  to  Osborne,  where  he  delivered 
up  for  the  last  time,  his  seals  of  office  to  the  Queen.  Her 
Majesty  offered,  as  she  had  done  in  1874,  to  raise  him  to 
the  peerage  as  an  Earl,  but  he  respectfully  declined  the 
honor. 

So  ended  the  public  life  of  William  Ewart  Gladstone, 
England's  greatest  commoner. 


264  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Lord  Roseberry  was  sent  for  to  undertake  the  duty  of 
reconstructing  the  Government. 

In  1886,  with  Gladstone's  return  to  power,  Lord  Rose- 
bery  attained  the  Foreign  Office.  Although  he  had  but  a 
short  time  to  prove  his  fitness  for  the  post,  he  won  general 
approval  and  throughout  all  the  civilized  world  became 
known  as  a  statesman  of  the  first  rank. 

1 '  But  he  has  more  stuff  in  him  than  will  ever  find  expres- 
sion in  Blue  Books,"  was  said  of  him  after  his  life  of  Pitt 
appeared.  He  is  also  a  scholar  of  first  rank.  In  a  cabinet 
rich  in  literary  men — Morley,  Sir  George  Trevelyan,  and 
Gladstone  himself — Lord  Rosebery  held  his  own.  His  style 
is  keen  and  incisive,  but  careful  and  full  of  evidences  of 
discriminative  research,  while  now  and  then  he  betrays  a 
close  study  of  Macauley  in  his  own  interminable  sentences." 
His  learning  has  won  for  him  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.  D. 
from  Cambridge  University;  the  distinction  of  being  presi- 
dent of  the  Social  Science  Congress,  Lord  Rector  of  Aber- 
deen University  and  Lord  Rector  of  Edinburgh  University. 

He  is  proudest  of  the  acts  that  identify  him  with  the 
people — the  equipment  of  the  People's  Palace,  the  improve- 
ment and  the  importation  of  farm  horses,  and  the  removal 
of  religious  disabilities  from  university  tests  that  barred  to 
high  honors  all  but  Church  of  England  students.  He  advo- 
cated the  abolition  of  the  catechism  from  Scotch  and  Irish 
schools,  but  the  spiritual  peers  were  too  much  for  him  there. 
He  pulled  down  squajid  huts  and  tenements  and  put  comfort- 
able homes  in  their  places  by  the  Artisans'  Dwelling  Act; 
and  while  thousands  of  her  Majesty's  subjects  were  on  the 
verge  of  starvation,  he  protested  against  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
bill  for  conferring  the  title  of  Empress  of  India  on  the 
Queen  as  being  repugnant  to  popular  feeling  at  that  time,  by 
heaping  up  honors  on  royalty  against  the  heaped-up  misery 
of  the  people. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

THE    MIDLOTHIAN    MANIFESTO. 

Hark  to  that  shrill,  sudden  shout, 
The  cry  of  an  applauding  multitude, 
Swayed  by  some  loud-voiced  orator  who  wields 
The  living-  mass  as  if  he  were  its  soul  ! 

—  William  Cullen  Bryant. 

Thus  an  admonition  when  it  comes  at  the  proper  moment,  from 
the  lips  of  a  man  who  enjoys  the  respect  of  the  world,  is  often  able 
not  only  to  deter  men  from  the  commission  of  crime,  but  leads  them 
into  the  right  path.  For  when  the  life  of  a  speaker  is  known  to  be 
in  unison  with  his  words  it  is  impossible  that  his  advice  should  not 
have  the  greatest  weight. — Polybius. 

In  this  chapter  we  present  the  entire  platform,  as  we 
should  call  it  in  this  country,  of  the  memorable  Midlothian 
campaign  of  18 9 2.-  Mr.  Gladstone  delivered  his  first  ad- 
dress at  the  Music  Hall,  Edinborough.  It  is  the  most  won- 
derful instance  of  "The  Old  Man  Eloquent"  on  record. 
This  chapter  forms  an  exhaustive  text-book  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's political  philosophy.  Mr.  Gladstone  said: 

' '  The  question  has  been  much  discussed  what  the  Home 
Rule  Bill  is  to  be.  Some  people  have  conceived  that  it  was 
a  dark  and  deep  secret  hatched  in  our  breasts  ready  to  be 
let  loose  upon  the  world,  all  prepared  with  its  clauses  and 
its  sections,  every  important  principle  of  it  and  every  unim- 
portant principle  of  it  ready  to  spring  as  a  surprise  upon 
the  country.  That  has  been  a  favorite  doctrine  of  the  Tories. 
Well,  with  regard  to  the  Home  Rule  Bill,  undoubtedly,  in 
my  opinion,  the  first  duty*  and  the  greatest  duty  of  a  Liberal 
government,  if  it  should  be  formed,  would  be  the  prepara- 
tion and  the  introduction  of  such  a  bill.  It  would  be  a  vio- 
lation of  every  principle  we  profess,  of  every  pledge  we 


266  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

have  given  for  the  last  six  years,  if  we  were  to  propose  to 
adopt  any  other  view  than  that.  With  regard  to  the  prin- 
ciples of  such  a  bill,  pray  let  rne  remind  you  that  even  our 
opponents  do  not  say  that  it  would  be  wise  or  practicable  to 
set  out  all  those  particulars;  but  they  sometimes  complain 
that  they  know  nothing  about  the  principles  upon  which  it  is 
to  be  founded.  Xow  I  state  that  they  knoAv  a  great  deal  about 
the  principles  upon  which  it  is  to  be  founded,  and  for  that 
purpose  I  go  back  to  the  declarations  of  1886.  Those  declara- 
tions it  was  my  duty  to  make  on  the  part  of  the  government 
of  that  year,  and  they  have  never  been  retracted,  never  dis- 
owned, not  a  word  has  ever  been  spoken  in  the  way  of  reces- 
sion of  any  one  of  them.  What  we  stated  then  was  this — 
that  the  object  of  such  a  bill  was  to  give  to  Ireland  full  and 
effective  control  of  her  own  properly  local  affairs.  And 
then  it  was  my  duty  to  state  the  conditions  under  which,  as 
far  as  we  were  concerned,  alone,  that  control  could  be  given, 
and  the  conditions  named  by  me  were  five.  The  first  of  them 
was  the  full  and  effective  maintenance  of  the  supremacy  of 
Parliament.  Now  shall  I  say  one  word  to  you  upon  that 
important  phrase  '  the  supremacy  of  Parliament '  ?  Lord 
Salisbury  says  it  is  or  will  be  in  the  case  of  Ireland  a  sham. 
Well,  is  it  a  thing  unknown  to  us  now  beyond  the  limits  of 
our  own  country  ?  Have  we  not  scattered  over  the  world  a 
number  of  states,  colonial  in  their  origin,  which  have  in 
more  than  one  case  swollen  to  national  dimensions  ?  Is  it 
not  true  that  every  one  of  those  is  subject  to  the  supremacy 
of  Parliament  ?  And  I  want  to  know  whether  you  consider 
that  that  supremacy  is  or  is  not  a  shadow  or  a  fiction.  In 
my  opinion  it  is  a  real,  overshadowing,  controlling  power. 
The  second  condition  was  a  fair  adjustment  of  pecuniary 
burdens.  That  seems  to  have  been  not  made  in  principle 
the  subject  of  objection.  The  third  condition  was  the  special 
care  of  minorities.  We  declared  our  intention  to  go  all  possi- 
ble lengths  in  considering — ay,  in  adopting — every  reason- 


THE    MIDLOTHIAN    MANIFESTO.  207 

able  method  of  guarantee  to  defend  the  minority  as  against 
the  possibility  of  injustice,  by  wise  provision  in  the  local 
constitution.  We  made  those  declarations  without  the 
smallest  objection  from  the  Nationalists. 

We  even  went  the  immense  length  of  saying  that  possibly 
the  counties  of  Down  and  Antrim,  the  only  two  counties  in 
which  the  Orange  feeling  appears  to  be  so  dominant,  that 
the  language  held  and  the  temper  indulged  about  the 
Nationalists  of  Ireland — that  is,  about  the  body  of  the 
nation — seem  to  present  the  greatest  difficulty  in  the 
way  of  permanent  reconciliation  —  we  even  went  the 
length  of  saying  that  if  a  proposal  were  made  by  Ireland — 
by  these  counties  of  Ireland  in  particular — for  the  purpose 
of  severing  them  from  the  rest  of  their  countrymen  and 
keeping  them  under  the  British  Parliament,  even  that  pro- 
posal ought  to  be  entitled  to  respectful  and  tender  consider- 
ation. That  was  the  third  of  these  conditions.  But  I  am 
bound  to  say,  and  I  say  it  in  honor  of  the  inhabitants  of 
these  counties,  that,  as  far  as  they  made  any  declaration, 
their  declaration  was  ' '  No  ;  we  refuse  to  be  severed  from 
the  rest  of  Ireland. " 

The  fourth  condition  was — and  here  we  had  Scotland 
especially  in  view — that  no  principle  should  be  laid  down 
for  Ireland  with  respect  to  which  we  were  not  to  admit  that 
Scotland,  if  she  thought  fit,  was  entitled  to  claim  the  bene- 
fit. I  say  nothing  further  upon  that  subject.  The  same 
course  applied  to  England.  What  we  meant  and  what  we 
contended  was  that  the  principle  of  political  equality 
between  the  three  countries  in  every  substantial  respect, 
and  subject  to  Imperial  laws  and  considerations,  was  to 
remain  absolute  and  inviolate.  The  last  condition  was  that 
we  should  not  propose  a  mere  piecemeal  or  halfway  meas- 
ure, but  something  which  should  really  constitute  a 
substantial  settlement  of  a  long  and  inveterate  controversy 
and  should  give  reasonable  hope  of  peace  and  satisfaction  to 


268  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

the  country  and  freedom  from  the  frightful  strife  and  from 
the  intolerable  burden  which  that  controversy  has  imposed 
upon  us  for  the  last  fifty  years.  He  who  knows  those  five 
conditions  of  a  Home  Rule  Bill,  knows  already  a  great  deal 
about  the  Home  Rule  Bill.  One  other  condition  has  been 
suggested  to  us  by  the  voice  of  public  opinion,  and  in 
respect  and  deference  to  that  voice  has  been  adopted  by  us. 
You  will  readily  perceive  that  I  mean  the  retention  of  an 
Irish  representation  at  Westminster.  That  was  not  our 
opinion,  but  it  was  an  opinion  with  respect  to  which  we  felt 
these  two  things — first,  that  the  country  was  entitled  to 
impose  it  upon  us  if  it  thought  fit ;  and,  secondly,  that  the 
motive  upon  which  it  was  founded  was  a  motive  in  which 
we  ourselves  entirely  and  absolutely  shared — namely,  the 
desire  that  everything  should  be  done  to  testify  to  the  unity 
of  the  Empire  and  the  supremacy  of  Parliament.  We  have 
never  concealed — I  do  not  conceal  now — that  while  the 
retention  of  Irish  members  has  a  most  valuable  meaning  as 
a  living  assertion  of  the  unity  of  the  Empire,  it  will  and 
must  be,  attended,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  by  certain  incon- 
veniences. Now  I  will  just  point  out  to  you  some  of  the 
questions  that  arise  in  regard  to  this  retention  of  Irish 
members.  As  to  the  mode  in  which  they  are  to  be  retained, 
one  question  that  arises  is,  are  you  to  retain  a  portion  of 
them,  or  are  you  to  retain  the  whole  of  them  ?  I  am  not 
going  to  discuss  this  subject  now ;  it  would  be  too  long  and 
must  be  ineffectual.  I  am  only  going  to  state  them  as  lying 
on  the  surface  of  the  case,  being  palpable  to  every  man  who 
gives  it  a  moment's  serious  or  practical  consideration.  The 
first  is,  shall  you  retain  the  whole  of  the  Irish  members  or 
shall  you  retain  a  part  ?  The  next  is,  shall  those  who  are 
retained  vote  on  all  questions  coming  before  Parliament,  or 
shall  you  endeavor,  if  you  can,  to  make  a  division  of  ques- 
tions, and  to  limit  them  to  one  portion,  excluding  them 
from  another  portion  ?  The  third  is,  will  you  have  for  Ire- 


MR.  GLADSTONE  IN  MIDLOTHIAN. 


THE    MIDLOTHIAN    MANIFESTO.  269 

land  one  set  of  members  or  two  ?  As  you  call  it,  I  think, 
in  the  arrangement  of  a  mine,  will  you  have  one  shift  of 
laborers  or  two  ?  And  another  is,  will  you  proceed  upon 
the  basis  of  the  present  Parliamentary  system  in  Ireland, 
the  present  division  of  the  country  into  districts,  and  the 
present  number  of  its  members,  or  will  you  endeavor  to 
reconstruct  that  system  and  readjust  it  with  reference  to  its 
relations  with  England  and  Scotland  or  with  reference  to 
any  other  consideration  ?  Now  you  will  at  once  see  that  all 
these  are  practical  matters  which  must  be  approached  in  a 
practical  spirit.  They  do  not  raise  difficulties  of  a  character 
to  be  compared  for  one  instant  with  the  dreadful  difficulties 
of  the  present  Irish  controversy. 

We  scout  wholly  the  preposterous  representations  of 
those  who — mark  my  words — when  we  get  into  this  discus- 
sion, will  take  up  these  difficulties  and  exaggerate  them  and 
endeavor  to  raise  them  as  objections  to  the  principle  of  the 
scheme  which  we  all  have  at  heart.  They  are  not  of  that 
character  at  all.  They  are  secondary  difficulties.  They 
may  involve,  as  almost  all  practical  adjustments  do  involve, 
certain  inconveniences.  And  how  are  those  to  be  dealt 
with  ?  Why,  gentlemen,  they  are  to  be  dealt  with  by  the 
responsible  Ministers  of  the  Crown,  and  if  the  result  of  your 
action  and  the  result  of  the  action  of  other  constituencies 
should  be  that  a  Liberal  Government  is  to  be  established, 
then  it  will  be  the  obvious  duty  of  that  Government  to  con- 
sider this  important  subject  of  the  retention  of  the  Irish 
members  in  conjunction  with  every  other  part  of  the  case, 
to  make  to  Parliament  the  propositions  which  in  detail  they 
consider  upon  the  whole  the  best,  and  to  use  every  effort  in 
their  power  to  carry  it  into  law.  Now  I  hope  you  will  be 
able,  both  in  your  own  minds  and  in  discourse  with  others, 
to  see  how  this  question  stands — a  purely  practical  question, 
a  question  that  ought  not  to  be  prematurely  decided,  a  ques- 
tion in  respect  to  which,  so  far  as  we  know,  the  country 


270  LIFE  OF  GLA;X-;;\;M;. 

holds  to  the  principle,  but  has  not  given  any  marked  pref- 
erence to  any  particular  form  of  detail.  A  Liberal 
Government  would  have  to  accept  that  responsibility,  and 
would  meet  that  responsibility,  as  I  hope  we  have  in  other 
times  met  like  men  the  responsibilities  that  have  fallen  upon 
us.  Mr.  Gladstone  next  contrasted  the  reception  of  the 
Home  Rule  proposals  by  the  "educated  classes"  who  were 
said  to  compose  the  Unionist  party  with  the  spirit  with 
which  the  people  of  Ireland  accepted  them,  and  he  concluded 
by  speaking  upon  the  subject  of  the  Irish  Local  Government 
Bill.  There  never  was,  he  said,  a  more  gross  breach  of 
faith  than  the  offering  of  the  Local  Government  Bill  to  that 
still  distracted  country. 

Mr.  Gladstone  visited  Glasgow  on  Saturday  for  the  pur- 
pose of  delivering  an  address  to  the  representatives  of  the 
Liberal  associations  of  Glasgow  and  the  West  of  Scotland. 
The  Theatre  Royal  was  crowded,  and  so  were  the  streets 
along  the  route.  In  the  course  of  his  speech  Mr.  Gladstone 
referred  thus  to  the  Ulster  agitation: — The  alarmists  of 
northeastern  Ireland — who  constitute  the  bulk  of  the  popu- 
lation, or  the  large  majority  of  the  population,  nowhere 
except  in  the  little  narrow  strip  of  country  along  the  north- 
eastern coast  —-call  themselves  by  the  name  of  Ulster.  But 
yet  Ulster  does  ndt  consist  of  two  counties;  it  consists  of 
nine  counties.  Of  these  nine  counties,  four  are  represented 
exclusively  by  Home  Rulers  (cheers);  one,  the  county  of 
Tyrone,  is  equally  divided;  four  have  a  majority  opposed 
to  Home  Rule,  and  that  majority  is  concentrated  in  a  great 
degree  in  the  two  counties  of  Down  and  Antrim.  Is  it  not 
a  most  astonishing  circumstance  that  apprehension  and  alarm 
should  be  so  active  where  the  Protestants  are  in  the  vast 
majority,  and  that,  on  the  contrary,  where  the  Protestants 
are  scattered  in  the  great  bulk  of  Ireland,  almost  man  by 
man,  with  immense  thousands  of  Roman  Catholics  around 
them,  these  Protestants  are  perfectly  calm,  perfectly  com- 


THE    MIDLOTHIAN    MANIFESTO.  271 

posed,  and  make  none   of  those  appeals  to  which  our  tory 
friends  desire  to  give  such  extravagant  weight? 

Dealing  with  the  danger  to  civil  liberty  from  ecclesiastical 
power,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  : — I  am  not  a  man  to  disparage 
or  undervalue  such  a  danger.  It  exists  in  many  conditions 
of  society.  It  has  existed  in  many  religious  communities, 
and  not  the  least  unnaturally  in  the  Roman  Catholic  com- 
munion, where  the  clergy  are  the  best  organized,  and  where 
they  are  the  great  distinctive  character,  as  they  depend 
upon  a  foreign  centre.  This  danger  of  ecclesiastical  power 
is  supposed  to  arise  from  the  Roman  Catholic  priesthood, 
the  local  clergy  in  Ireland.  That  is  one  source,  undoubt- 
edly, from  which  it  may  arise.  I  cannot  say  that  it  im- 
presses me  with  any  very  great  alarms,  because  I  very 
greatly  doubt  if  the  power  the  Roman  Catholic  priesthood 
in  Ireland  have  over  their  flocks  is  as  great  as  it  was  fifty  or 
sixty  years  ago.  (Hear,  hear. )  We  have,  thank  God,  in  spite 
of  the  great  bulk  of  those  who  are  now  teaching  to  us  this 
doctrine  of  danger — we  have,  thank  God,  during  the  inter- 
val redressed  with  strong  hands  many  of  the  particular 
grievances  of  Ireland ;  and  I  believe  that  the  more  liberty 
you  give  to  the  mass  of  the  Irish  people  the  less  risk  there 
will  or  can  possibly  be  of  their  surrendering  that  liberty 
into  the  hands  of  ecclesiastical  power.  I  do  not  wish  to  speak 
with  dishonor  of  the  Irish  priesthood.  I  will  not  speak  in 
their  disparagement — I  have  often  differed  from  them 
before  and  I  may  differ  from  them  again,  but  this  I  know, 
that  there  never  was  a  clergy  that  entered  more  profoundly 
into  the  deepest  wrongs  that  ever  were  inflicted  by  one 
nation  upon  another  (cheers),  there  never  was  a  clergy  which 
secured  for  itself  a  more  ^intimate  and  more  truly  conse- 
crated place  in  the  hearts  of  the  people.  There  never  was 
a  clergy  that  practically  built  its  power  more  upon  the 
recollection  of  inestimable  services.  And  if  I  want  to 
diminish  the  power  that  that  clergy  may  have  for  raising 


272  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

its  influence  to  an  abusive  height,  my  secret  and  nostrum 
for  doing  that  is  this — to  put  the  people  upon  a  footing  of 
justice  in  which  they  will  no  longer  have  a  motive  for  seek- 
ing out  to  themselves  extraneous  force,  but  will  rest  pro- 
tected and  happy  under  the  guidance  of  a  beneficent  govern- 
ment and  of  equal  laws. 

Mr.  Gladstone  next  spoke  of  the  Maltese  marriage  ques- 
tion, and  read  this  clause  from  the  draft  ordinance: — "A 
marriage  (meaning  always  civil  marriages,  remember),  "a 
marriage  between  persons  who,  with  a  view  to  elude  the 
law  of  the  Catholic  Church  concerning  marriage,  have  aban- 
doned the  Catholic  religion  is  invalid."  I  call  that  an 
astounding  provision.  Surely  we  understand  at  this  time 
of  day  that  a  change  under  the  impulse  of  conscience  from 
one  religion  to  another  is  a  matter  of  private  and  personal 
concern  (cheers),  and  that  the  law  cannot  interfere  between 
the  private  conscience  and  the  God  who  ought  to  rule.  Yes, 
but  what  says  this  ordinance  ?  Two  persons  have  abandoned 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church;  they  fall  in  love  with  one 
another  and  contract  a  marriage,  and  that  marriage  may  at 
any  time  under  this  draft  ordinance  be  questioned,  and 
questioned  not  as  it  affects  spiritual  efficacy — let  us  leave 
that  to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church — but  as  to  its  civil  effect 
and  as  to  the  legitimacy  of  the  children,  that  may  be 
brought  into  question  and  decided  in  a  way  we  know  not 
what  in  a  Maltese  court  of  justice,  on  the  plea  that  these 
p3ople  left  the  Catholic  Church  in  order  to  elude  the  Cath- 
olic Church  law.  Can  you  conceive  a  state  of  things  more 
monstrous  ?  But  this  is  practically  the  result  of  the  mission 
of  Sir  Lintern  Simmons,  which  sprang  from  Lord  Salis- 
bury.'s  Government,  and  Lord  Salisbury's  government  is 
receiving  the  allegiance  of  the  Presbyterians,  or  a  large 
part  of  the  Presbyterians  of  Ireland,  who  are  now  soliciting 
you  in  Scotland  to  give  your  confidence  as  being  the  per- 


THE    MIDLOTHIAN    MANIFESTO.  273 

sons  best  qualified  to  watch  the  designs  and  to  restrain  the 
excesses  of  ecclesiastical  power. 

On  Monday  afternoon  Mr.  Gladstone  spoke  briefly  at  Stow. 
A  resolution  of  confidence  was  passed,  with  about  fifteen  dis- 
sentients, an  amendment  having  been  proposed  to  the  effect 
that  the  meeting  sorrowfully  disapproved  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
action  with  regard  to  the  disestablishment  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland,  and  also  his  policy  of  Home  Rule  for  Ireland. 

THE   LABOR   QUESTION. 

At  five  o'clock  Mr.  Gladstone  addressed  a  crowded  assem- 
blage in  the  public  hall,  Gorebridge.  The  streets  all  the 
way  between  the  railway  station  and  the  hall  were  decorated 
with  flags.  The  centre  flag  of  a  line  of  bannerets  stretched 
across  the  street  bore  the  inscription  "Welcome  Gladstone, 
man  of  God."  Mr.  Gladstone,  on  his  arrival  at  the  rail- 
way station,  was  loudly  cheered.  Preceded  by  a  local  band 
which  played  "Rule  Britannia"  and  "See  the  conquering 
hero  comes,"  he  drove  to  the  Free  Church  manse,  where  he 
received  a  deputation  of  miners.  He  afterwards  drove  to 
the  public  hall,  where  he  was  received  with  great  enthusi- 
asm, and  devoted  a  lengthy  address  to  labor  questions. 
After  advocating  in  the  interests  of  the  working  classes 
registration  reform,  payment  of  public  election  expenses, 
payment  of  members,  and  an  increased  number  of  Labor 
representatives  in  the  House  of  Commons,  he  went  on  to 
ask:  What,  then,  is  it  reasonable  that  the  laboring  inter- 
est should  do  with  the  Liberal  party?  I  will  endeavor 
respectfully  to  point  out  one  thing  which  they  should  not 
do.  I  do  not  think  they  ought  to  fasten  themselves  to  the 
Liberal  party  so  as  to  qualify  their  independence.  I  have 
always  told  the  Irish  Nationalists  that  it  was  their  duty  to 
maintain,  however  closely  we  may  be  agreed  in  regard  to 
Irish  measures — and  I  am  happy  to  believe  that  we  are 
thoroughly  and  heartily  agreed — yet  I  have  always  told 
them  that  it  was  their  duty  to  maintain  their  position  of 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

independence  as  Irishmen,  and  I  have  told  them  again  and 
again  that  if  the  Tories  will,  in  their  judgment,  do  better 
for  Ireland  than  we  can,  let  them  go  to  the  Tories.  The 
Tories  once  gave  them  promises  to  that  effect  before  an 
election.  They  believed  them,  and  voted  for  the  Tories  at 
that  election.  The  next  scene  in  the  drama  was  the  pro- 
posal by  the  Tories  of  a  Coercion  Bill.  (Laughter  and 
cheers.)  But,  gentlemen,  let  the  labor  party  and  the 
labor  interest  maintain  their  independence;  but  I  should 
be  very  sorry  to  say  that  laboring  men  are  not  to  vote  for 
Liberals  when  they  think  that  Liberals  are  the  fairest  and 
best  representatives  of  their  interests.  Referring  to  his 
interview  with  the  miners,  Mr.  Gladstone  said:  I  would 
not  wish  to  have  mining  interests  and  feelings  represented 
either  here  or  elsewhere  by  persons  either  more  temperate 
or  apparently  more  competent  and  qualified  in  every  respect 
to  do  them  full  justice.  I  thank  you  for  having  given  me  the 
immediate  opportunity  of  communication  which,  although 
it  was  succinct,  was  most  interesting  and  most  valuable. 

As  for  strikes,  Mr.  Gladstone  went  on  to  say,  they  are  a 
rough,  costly,  and  wasteful  proceeding.  But  that  which  is 
evil  in  itself  is  often  a  relative  good  under  the  conditions  of 
human  life  when  it  prevents  a  greater  evil,  and,  though  in 
my  own  mind  I  may  be  wrong  and  have  no  other  faculty 
of  judgment  than  may  obtain  in  a  greater  degree  with  other 
people,  upon  the  whole  I  believe  that  that  rough-and-ready 
.  and  costly  instrument  has  done  much  in  the  long  run  in  se- 
curing the  rights  and  raising  the  condition  of  working  men. 
Do  not  let  me  be  misunderstood.  I  hope  we  may  get  to 
something  better,  something  cheaper,  something  more 
effective;  but  I  am  not  one  of  those  who  are  prepared  to  say 
that  the  laboring  classes  of  this  country  have  been  either 
uniformly  or  generally  unwise  in  resorting  to  that  method 
when  they  thought  they  had  a  just  and  a  substantial  cause 
and  when  they  had  no  other  instrument  open  to  them. 


THE    MIDLOTHIAN    MANIFESTO.  275 

(Cheers. )  There  is  another  instrument  of  great  importance 
to  the  laboring  classes  that  I  cannot  help  valuing  very  highly 
indeed,  and  that  is  the  method  of  co-operation  both  for  dis- 
tributive and  for  productive  purposes.  The  hours  of  labor 
question  Mr.  Gladstone  dealt  with  thus  :  However,  we  all 
look  back  with  unbounded  satisfaction  upon  the  great  prog- 
ress that  has  been  made  by  voluntary  arrangement  in  that 
vitally  important  process  which  is  now  specially  before  you 
—namely,  the  shortening  of  the  hours  of  labor.  (Hear, 
hear.)  You  must  allow  me,  if  you  please,  to  say  one  word 
upon  the  proposals  for  a  general  shortening  of  the  hours  of 
labor.  I  had  the  advantage  of  a  long  and  tolerably  tough 
discussion  a  few  weeks  ago  in  London  with  the  representa- 
tives of  a  movement,  and  an  important  movement,  for  se- 
curing the  adoption  of  a  general  compulsory  Eight  Hours' 
Bill.  In  my  opinion  that  deputation  clearly  had  not  meas- 
ured accurately  the  difficulties — I  would  almost  say,  at  the 
present  moment,  the  impossibility — of  so  vast  a  measure. 
I  do  not  think  that  they  had  fully  considered  the  enormous 
variations  that  prevail  between  different  kinds  and  classes 
of  labor.  I  do  not  think  that  they  had  accurately  estimated 
the  amount  of  legal  and  Parliamentary  interference  which  a 
law  such  as  they  were  disposed  to  recommend  would  require 
in  what  is  now  perfectly  free — namely,  the  nature  aLid 
character  of  trade  organization.  But  what  I  ventured  to 
tell  those  gentlemen  I  repeat  to  you. 

THE  EIGHT  HOURS'  QUESTION. 

If  the  consent  or  refusal  of  the  majority  of  a  given  trade 
was  to  determine  the  lengths  of  legal  labor,  and  to  entail 
the  infliction  of  a  legal  penalty  by  a  sentence  of  a  court  of 
justice,  in  order  to  come  at  that  state  of  things  which  they 
did  not  appear  to  me  to  have  at  all  considered,  you  would 
be  obliged  to  fix  the  conditions  of  a  trade  organization  which 
was  to  say  that  ay  or  no  as  rigidly  by  law  as  you  now  fix 


276  LIEE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

the  conditions  of  a  constituency  of  a  county.  I  lay  that 
before  you  as  a  practical  consideration  very  far  from  being 
a  matter  connected  with  any  question  of  political  excitement 
or  of  party  interest.  But  now  I  will  tell  you  my  interpre- 
tation of  that  movement  in  London,  which  I  think  is  very, 
very  far  indeed  as  yet  from  being  a  general  movement  of 
the  laboring  classes  in  favor  of  a  universal  eight  hour  day. 
My  idea  of  it  is  this— that  it  is  not  at  all  a  thing  to  be  com- 
plained of,  not  at  all  to  be  regretted,  though  I  was  obliged 
to  point  out  difficulties  rather  than  to  hold  out  any  prema- 
ture encouragement,  for  in  my  opinion  that  man  is  a  bad 
friend  of  the  working  class  who  holds  out  encouragements 
which  are  or  may  be  premature.  He  tempts  them  to  walk 
upon  slippery  paths  where  they  may  have  very  awkward 
falls,  or  where  they  may  feel  impediments  in  their  way  on 
which  they  had  not  reckoned.  (Hear,  hear.)  That  is  the 
spirit  in  which  I  should  always  rather  wish  to  speak,  to  make 
my  conversations  or  my  speeches  to  laboring  men  somewhat 
less  favorable  than  my  own  views  really  are,  rather  than  to 
put  an  appearance  favorable  to  them  which  I  might  not 
afterwards  be  able  entirely  to  sustain.  The  way  in  which  I 
interpret  that  universal  eight  hours'  movement  is  this.  It 
was  supported  in  a  general  way  by  a  large  mass  meeting  of 
laboring  men  in  Hyde  Park.  I  do  not  treat  it  as  an  insig- 
nificent  phenomenon  at  all.  I  think  there  is  a  good  deal  of 
substance  and  meaning  in  it,  and  the  substance  and  meaning 
I  think  are,  then,  these — the  indeterminate,  if  I  may  so  say, 
the  inarticulate  expression  of  a  sentiment  which  is  strong, 
substantial,  and  just. 

The  feeling  of  the  laboring  man  on  the  eight  hours'  move- 
ment, if  I  might  consider  the  whole  of  those  who  support  it 
as  concentrated  into  one  individual,  is  this — he  knows,  the 
laboring  man  knows,  that  in  time  past  distribution  between 
labor  and  capital,  the  distribution '  of  the  profits  of  produc- 
tion, in  his  opinion,  has  not  been  equitably  made.  Capita] 


THE    MIDLOTHIAN    MANIFESTO.  277 

has  had  too  much  and  labor  has  had  too  little.  I  have  not  a 
doubt  that  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases,  if  we  look  widely 
and  comprehensively  over  the  past,  that  in  that  partnership 
— for  it  always  has  been  a  partnership — between  capital  and 
labor  capital  has  had  too  much,  and  a  great  deal  too  much, 
and  labor  has  had  too  little,  and  in  many  cases  a  great  deal 
too  little,  a  lamentable  deal  too  little.  We  ought  not  to  be 
content  with  showing  that  it  is  premature  and  perhaps  im- 
possible to  propose — at  any  rate  most  certainly  premature 
to  propose — an  Eight  Hours'  Bill  for  all  descriptions  and 
kinds  of  labor  throughout  the  community.  We  ought  not 
to  be  content  with  that.  We  ought  to  do  more.  We  ought 
to  get  at  that  which  is  substantial  and  reasonable  in  the 
workman's  mind,  and  see  if  we  cannot  aid  him  in  making 
some  progress  in  the  road  which  he  desires  to  go.  The  sub- 
ject of  a  miners'  eight  hours  is  undoubtedly  in  various  par- 
ticulars, and  from  many  points  of  view,  a  very  different 
subject,  a  far  more  accessible  subject,  and  a  far  more  hope- 
ful subject  than  the  subject  of  a  universal  Eight  Hour  Bill. 
All  men  are  heartily  united  in  the  doctrine  that  eight  hours 
below  ground  out  of  twenty-four  on  six  days — if  on  five 
days  so  much  the  better — is  enough  for  a  human  being. 
(Cheers.)  First  of  all,  are  the  mining  classes  practically 
unanimous  ?  Well,  I  received  in  this  very  place  and  in  the 
House  of  Commons  from  one  whom  you  much  respect  a  most 
interesting  assurance  on  that  subject,  so  far  as  this  district 
is  concerned.  I  was  assured  that  in  every  colliery  except 
one  in  this  immediate  district  the  eight  hours'  system  is  es- 
tablished by  the  consent  both  of  employers  and  of  laborers, 
and  that  it  works  admirably  well  (cheers),  having  for  its  re- 
sults even  this — about  which  some  might  have  been  scepti- 
cal— an  increase  of  output,  and  not  a  decrease.  (Hear,  hear. ) 
Now  supposing,  as  it  is  here,  there  is  a  unanimity — except 
in  ihe  case  of  a  particular  employer — of  the  men  in  this  dis- 
trict; supposing,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  miners  of 


278  LIFE    OF   GLADSTONE. 

Northumberland  and  Durham  adhere  to  their  doctrine  and 
offer  a  united  front  in  objection  to  the  universal  Eight  Hours' 
Miners'  Bill.  Then  I  am  led  to  ask  myself  this  question — • 
Would  it  be  possible  to  introduce  into  the  mining  business, 
for  the  purpose  of  imposing  locally  an  eight  hours'  limit, 
that  which  is  called  in  the  case  of  the  liquor  laws  local  op- 
tion ?  (Cheers.)  I  do  not  presume  to  give  you  a  positive 
opinion.  All  I  can  say  is  that  until  universal  unanimity 
has  prevailed,  and  in  cases  where  local  unanimity  exists,  I 
should  be  very  glad  indeed  to  see  that  principle  of  local 
option  made  available  to  avoid  the  difficulty  of  violent  inter- 
ference with  the  individual  freedom  of  bodies  of  men  that 
are  unwilling  to  give  it  up,  and  on  the  other  hand,  to  give 
full  scope, to  the  honorable  and  legitimate  aspirations  of  the 
miners  of  a  district  like  this,  who  value  the  eight  hours  for 
high  social  and  moral  purposes  and  who  are  unanimous  in 
their  desire  to  attain  it. 

On  Tuesday  Mr.  Gladstone  went  to  Dalkeith,  and  spoke 
chiefly  on  Scottish  Home  Rule  and  disestablishment.  The 
case  of  Scotland,  he  said,  was  different  from  that  of  Ire- 
land. Mr.  Gladstone  continued:  Scotland  enjoys,  happily, 
a  system  of  justice  and  administration  which  is  in  itself  as 
truly  national  as  the  system  of  justice  and  administration 
in  England  is  truly  English.  Scotland  differs,  happily,  in 
that  respect.  Scotland  has  the  most  harmonious  and  the 
most  complex  relations  with  England.  I  do  not  know  what 
shape,  I  do  not  venture  to  predict  or  forecast  what  shape, 
the  mediation  of  Scotland  will  finally  take  upon  this  sub- 
ject of  satisfaction  for  Scotch  nationality;  but  this  I  un- 
doubtedly will  say,  that  the  practical  working  of  the  present 
system  is  by  no  means  what  it  ought  to  be,  and  beyond  all 
doubt  it  is  pur  business  to  maintain  the  perfect  national 
right  of  Scotland  to  ask  from  the  Imperial  Parliament,  and 
to  obtain  from  the  Imperial  Parliament,  whatever  in  her 
ultimate  and  thoroughly  reasoned  conviction  she  finds  to  be 


THE    MIDLOTHIAN    MANIFESTO.  279 

necessary  for  her  welfare.  I  hope  I  have  spoken  plainly 
upon  that  subject,  but  I  have  told  you  that  the  present 
system  does  not  work  satisfactorily,  and  I  am  going  to  illus- 
trate that  in  a  way  that  I  think  you  will  understand  toler- 
ably well.  I  will  tell  you  what  my  great  complaint  with 
the  present  system  is.  My  great  complaint  is  that  when 
there  is  an  anti-Liberal  majority — and  I  use  the  word  anti- 
Liberal  because  it  saves  me  the  trouble  of  using  two  names, 
which  express  the  same  thing  (cheers),  one  of  which  would 
be  Toiy  and  the  other  Dissentient  Liberal;  I  call  them 
both  anti-Liberal — well,  whenever  there  is  an  anti-Liberal 
majority  the  vote  of  Scotland  is  put  down  by  that  anti- 
Liberal  majority.  Now,  that,  in  my  opinion,  is  a  seripus 
national  grievance. 

"I  have  spoken  plainly  on  the  subject  of  Scottish  nation- 
ality, and  now  I  come  to  another  subject — namely,  dises- 
tablishment (cheers) — and  on  that  subject  no  man  can  accuse 
me  of  any  want  of  frankness.  I  will  tell  you  upon  that, 
as  upon  other  matters,  exactly  what  I  think,  what  I  have 
done,  and  why  I  have  done  it.  The  first  question  is,  what 
did  I  promise  to  do  ?  This  question  was  alive  even  when  I 
first  came  into  Mid  Lothian.  I  saw  it  stated,  because  I 
believe  a  casual  inadvertence  of  a  friend  of  my  own,  who 
undertook  the  very  difficult  task  of  editing  four  volumes  of 
my  speeches  made  in  Scotland,  gave  some  color  to  the  doc- 
trine which  has  been  stated,  that  I  said  the  question  of  dis- 
establishment or  establishment  in  Scotland  can  never  be 
considered  with  propriety,  excepting  when  the  general 
election  had  been  based  upon  that  issue  as  its  principal  issue. 
Why,  I  should  have  been  mad  if  I  had  said  anything  of  the 
kind.  I  never  did  say  anything  of  the  kind.  What  I  said 
was  this — that  the  question  of  Scottish  disestablishment 
ought  not  to  be  carried  by  storm  ;  that  there  ought  to  be 
ample  opportunity  for  bringing  it  home  to  the  mind  of 
every  Scotsman,  that  it  should  have  full,  sufficient,  effectual 


280  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

consideration.  That  is  what  I  said,  and  what  I  say  now 
(cheers);  and  I  promised  that  I  at  any  rate  would  take  no 
part  in  promoting  Scottish  disestablishment,  until  in  my 
opinion  that  condition  had  been  realized.  Well,  that  was 
the  first  thing.  What  have  I  done  ?  This  is  what  I  have 
done.  I  came  here  in  1879,  and  in  1886  Mr.  Finlay  pro- 
posed a  bill  intended  to  prop  up  the  Established  Church  of 
Scotland.  The  votes  against  that  bill  were  not  conclusive, 
but  they  showed  that  Scottish  opinion  were  not  in  his  favor. 
I  took  no  part — I  had  regarded  this  as  an  entirely  Scottish 
question — and  I  determined  to  take  no  part  until  I  knew 
what  Scottish  electors  desired  and  required.  In  1888  'a 
regular  division  was  taken,  and  three-fifths — more  than 
three-fifths,  I  think — of  the  Scottish  members  voted  in  favor 
of  disestablishment.  (Cheers.)  When  in  1890  the  great 
question  came  forward  I  was  aware  that  disestablishment 
would  be  supported  by  a  still  larger  majority.  I  had  kept 
my  eyes  open,  and  I  had  observed  its  effect.  First  of  all, 
the  majority  had  increased,  and  it  was  known  it  was  going 
to  increase,  on  the  approximate  question,  from  three-sixths 
to  two  to  one — that  is,  two-thirds.  Secondly,  proof  of  the 
deep  interest  of  Scotland  in  the  matter,  and  a  proof  how 
thoroughly  Scotsmen  had  attended  to  it  was  given  in  this 
way?  Scotland  having,  I  think,  seventy-two  members  for 
her  share,  no  less  than  sixty-seven  Scottish  members  took 
part  in  the  division,  and  those  sixty-seven  Scottish  members 
voted  in  the  proportion  of  forty-three  to  twenty-four,  or 
nearly  two  to  one.  And  I  observed  another  fact,  and  it 
was  this — that  Scotland,  of  course,  had  her  share  of  vacan- 
cies, and  her  share  of  bye-elections  happily  resulted  in  the 
return  of  Liberals,  and  that  invariably  those  Liberals  were 
advocates  of  disestablishment.  If  I  was  to  give  fair  weight 
to  Scottish  opinion  could  I  overlook  these  facts  ?  In  1890 
I  fell  into  the  ranks  behind  Dr.  Cameron,  and  in  those 
ranks  I  continue." 


CHAPTER  XXIY. 
IRELAND:— MR.  GLADSTONE'S  HOME  RULE  BILL. 

Tyranny 

Is  far  the  worst  of  treasons.     Dost  thou  deem 
None  rebels  except  subjects-?    The  prince  who 
Neglects  or  violates  his  trust,  is  more 
A  brigand  than  the  robber-chief. 

— Lord  Byron. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  sympathies  were  with  humanity.  His  aspira- 
tions were  toward  the  everlasting  right.  In  measurably  realizing 
this  right  in  practical  and  political  affairs  he  had  to  be  expedient. 
But  between  right  and  expediency  there  is  no  necessary  conflict.  A 
truly  great  man  is  he  who  can  be  so  expedient  that  the  right  shall 
u'timately  prevail. 

— Bishop  Fallows. 

When  Edmund  Burke  died  in  1797,  Canning  wrote:  "There  is  but 
one  event,  but  it  is  an  event  of  the  world;  Burke  is  dead."  And  now 
that  Gladstone  hath  passed  from  the  strife  of  politics  to  where  beyond 
these  voices  there  is  rest  and  peace,  England  and  America  have  but 
one  heart;  that  heart  is  very  sore.  For  this  man,  who  reverenced  his 
conscience  as  his  king,  was  also  one  whose  "glory  was  redressing 
human  wrong."  At  once  the  child  of  genius,  wealth  and  power,  this 
young  patrician  took  as  his  clients  not  the  rich  and  great,  but  the 

poor  and  weak.  -Dr.  Hillis. 

\ 

We  have  no  apology  to  offer  for  presenting  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's Home  Rule  Bill  verbatim.  It  ranks  among  the  few 
great  national  documents  of  world-wide  and  permanent 
interest.  It  belongs  to  that  group  that  includes  Magna 
Charta,  the  Bill  of  Rights,  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
and  the  Proclamation  of  Emancipation.  It  will  be  studied 
for  generations  by  all  lovers  of  freedom.  We  count  it 
among  the  grandest  efforts  of  that  colossal  brain  and  that 
great  heart  large  as  humanity  which  has  just  been  taken 
from  us. 

281 


282  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

The  following  is  the  full  text  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  Home 
Rule  Bill  as  presented  to  Parliament,  and  issued  to  the 
members  thereof  in  printed  form  : 

WHEREAS,  It  is  expedient  that  without  impairing  or  restricting  the 
supreme  authority  of  Parliament,  an  Irish  Legislature  be  created  for 
such  purposes  in  Ireland  as  are  in  this  Act  mentioned;  be  it  therefore 
enacted  by  the  Queen's  most  excellent  Majesty,  by  and  with  the  advice 
and  consent  of  the  lords  spiritual  and  temporal  and  commons,  in  this 
present  Parliament  assembled,  and  by  the  authority  of  the  same  as 
follows: 

1.  On  and  after  the  appointed  day  there  shall  be  established  in 
Ireland  a  Legislature  consisting  of  her  Majesty  the  Queen  and  two 
houses,  a  legislative  council  and  a  legislative  assembly. 

2.  With  the  exceptions  and  subject  to  the  restrictions  in  this  Act 
mentioned,  there  shall  be  granted  to  the  Irish  Legislature  power  to 
make  laws  for  the  peace,  order  and  good  government  of  Ireland  in 
respect  to  matters  exclusively  relating    to  Ireland    or    some    part 
thereof. 

3.  The  Irish  Legislature  shall  not  have  the  power  to  make  laws 
in  respect  to  the  following  matters  or  any  of  them:     The  status  of 
dignity  of  the  crown  or  regency;  the  Lord  Lieutenant  as  representa- 
tive of  the  crown;  the  making  of  peace  or  war;  matters  arising  from 
a  state  of  war;  the  naval  or   military  forces,  or  the  defense  of  the 
realm;  treaties  and  other  relations  with  foreign  States,  or  the  rela- 
tions between  the  different  parts  of  her  Majesty's    dominions,    or 
offenses  connected  with  such  treaties;  dignities  or  titles  of  honor; 
treason  or  treason-felony;  alienage  or  naturalization;  trade  with  any 
place  out  of  Ireland;  quarantine  or  navigation;  except  in  respect  to 
inland  waters;  local  health  or  harbor  regulations;   beacons,  light- 
houses or  seamarks,  except  so  far  as  they  can  consistently  with  any 
general  Act  of  Parliament  be  constructed  or  maintained  by  local 
harbor  authority ;    coinage ;     legal    tender ;    standard  weights  and 
measures;   trade  marks^;  merchandise  marks;    copyright  of  patent 
rights.     Any  law  made  in  contravention  to  this  section    shall  be 
void. 

POWERS   OF   THE   IRISH   PARLIAMENT. 

4.  The  powers  of  the  Irish  Legislature  shall  not  extend  to  the 
making  of  any  law  respecting  the  establishment  or  endowment  of 
religion  or  prohibiting  the  free  exercise  thereof,  imposing  any  disa- 
bility or  conferring  any  privilege  on  account  of  religious  belief  or 
abrogating  or  prejudicially  affecting  the  right  to  establish  or  main- 
tain any  place  of  denominational  education  or  any  denominational 
institution  or  charity,  or  prejudicially  affecting  the  right  of  any  child 


IRELAND: — MR.  GLADSTONE'S  HOME  RULE  BILL.      283 

to  attend  a  school  receiving1  public  money  without  attending"  the 
religious  instruction  at  the  school,  or  whereby  any  person  may  be 
deprived  of  life,  liberty,  or  property  without  due  process  of  law. 

5.  The  executive  power  of  Ireland  shall  continue  to  be  vested  in 
the  Queen.     The  Lord  Lieutenant,  on  behalf  of   her  Majesty,  shall 
exercise  any  prerogatives  other  than  the  executive  power  of  the 
Queen,  which  may  be  delegated  to  him  by  her  Majesty,  and  shall,  in 
her  Majesty's  name,  summon,  prorogue,  and  disso  ve  the  Irish  Legis- 
lature. 

6.  The  Irish  Legislative  Council  shall  consist  of  forty-eight  coun- 
cilors.    Each  of  the  constituencies  mentioned  in  the  first  schedule  of 
this  Act  shall  return  the  number  of  councilors  named  opposite  thereto 
in  the  schedule.     Every  man  shall  be  entitled  to  be  registered  as  an 
elector,  and  when  registered  to  vote  at  the  election  of  the  councilor 
for  a  constituency,  who  owns  or  occupies  land  or  a  tenement  in  the 
constituency  of  the  ratable  value  of  more  than  twenty  pounds,  sub- 
ject to  like  conditions  as  the  man  who  is  entitled  at  the  passage  of 
the  Act  to  be  registered  and  to  vote  as  a  parliamentary  elector  with 
respect  to  ownership  qualification;  or  provided  that  a  man  shall  not 
be  entitled  to  be  registered,  nor  if  registered  to  vote  at  the  election 
of  a  councilor  in  more  than  one  constituency  in  the  same  year.     The 
term  of  office  of  every  councilor  shall  be  eight  years.     They  shall  not 
be  affected  by  dissolution.      Half  the  councilors  shall   retire   every 
fourth  year,  and  their  seats  shall  be  filled  by  a  new  election. 

LIFE   OF   THE   LEGISLATURE. 

7.  The    Irish    legislative    assembly   shall   consist    of   members 
returned  by  the  existing  parliamentary  constituencies  of  Ireland  or 
the  existing  divisions  thereof  and  elected  by  the  parliamentary  elect- 
ors in  those  constituencies.     The   Irish    legislative   assembly    when 
summoned  may,  unless  sooner  dissolved,  have  continuance  for  five 
years  from  the  day  on  which  the  summons  directs  it  to  meet,  and  no 
longer. 

8.  After  six  years  from  the  passing  of  the  Act,  the  Irish  legis'a- 
ture  may  alter  the  qualifications  of  electors  and  constituencies,  pro- 
vided that  in  such  distribution  due  regard  be  had  for  the  population 
of  the  constituencies.    If  a  bill  or  any  provision  of  a  bill  adopted  by 
the  legislative  assembly  be  lost  by  the  disagreement  of  the  legislative 
council,  and  after  dissolution,  or  a  period  of  two  years  from  such  disa- 
greement, such  bill  or  a  bill  for  enacting  said  provisions  be  again 
adopted  by  the  legislative  assembly,  and  fails  within  three  months 
afterward  to  be  adopted  by  the  legislative  council,  the  same  shall 
forthwith  be  submitted  to  the  members  of  the  two  houses  deliberating 
and  voting  together  thereon,  and  shall  be  adopted  or  rejected,  accord- 
ing to  the  decision  of  a  majority  of  those  members  on  the  question. 


284  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

9.  Unless  and  until  Parliament  otherwise  determines,  the  follow- 
ing provisions  shall  have  effect :     Each  of  the  constituencies  named 
in  the  second  schedule  shall  return  to  serve  in  Parliament  the  number 
of  members  named  opposite  thereto  in  that  schedule  and  no  more. 
Dublin  University  shall  cease  to  return  a  member.     The  existing 
divisions  of  the  constituencies  shall,  save  as  provided  in  that  schedule, 
be  abolished.    An  Irish  representative  peer  in  the  House  of  Lords  and 
a  member  in  the  House  of  Commons  for  an  Irish  constituency  shall 
not  be  entitled  to  deliberate  or  vote  on  any  bill  or  motion  in  relation 
thereto,  the  operation  of  which  bill  or  motion  is  confined  to  Great 
Britain  or  some  part  thereof ;  and  any  motion  or  resolution  relating 
solely  to  a  tax  not  raised  or  to  be  raised  in  Ireland,  or  any  vote  on  an 
appropriation  of  money  made  exclusively  for  some  services  not  men- 
tioned  in  the  third  schedule ;    any  motion  or  resolution    referring 
exclusively   to   Great  Britain    or   some  part  thereof,   or  some  local 
authority,  or  some  person  or  thing  therein.      Any  motion  incidental 
to  such  motion  or  resolution,  either  as  last  mentioned  or  that  relates 
solely  to  some  tax  not  raised  in  Ireland,  or  incidental  to  any  such 
vote  or  appropriation  of  money  aforesaid  in  compliance  with  the  pro- 
visions of  this  section  shall  not  be  questioned  otherwise  than  in  each 
House,  in  the  manner  provided  by  the  House. 

QUALIFICATIONS   OF   ELECTORS. 

The  election  laws  and  laws  relating  to  the  qualification  of  Parlia- 
mentary electors  shall  not,  so  far  as  they  relate  to  Parliamentary 
electors,  be  altered  by  the  Irish  leg'slature,  but  this  enactment  shall 
not  prevent  the  Irish  legislature  from  dealing  with  any  officers  con- 
cerned with  the  issue  of  writs  of  election.  If  any  officers  are  so 
dealt  with  it  shall  be  lawful  for  her  Majesty  in  council  to  arrange 
for  the  issue  of  such  writs.  Writs  issued  in  pursuance  of  such  orders 
shall  be  of  the  same  effect  as  if  issued  in  the  manner  heretofore 
accustomed. 

IRISH   FINANCES. 

10.  There  shall  be  an  Irish  exchequer  and  consolidated  fund 
separate  from  the  United  Kingdom.  The  duties  of  customs  and  excise 
and  the  duties  of  postage  shall  be  imposed  by  act  of  Parliament,  but 
subject  to  the  provisions  of  this  act.     The  Irish  Legislature  may  in 
order  to  provide  for  the  public  service  in  Ireland  impose  other  taxes, 
save  as  in  this  act  mentioned.      All  matters  relating  to  taxes    in 
Ireland  and  the  collection  and  management  therof  shall  be  regulated 
by  Irish  act.     The  same  shall  be  collected  and  managed  by  the  Irish 
government  and  shall  form   part  of   the  public  revenues  of  Ireland, 
provided  that  duties  and  customs  shall  be  regulated,  collected,  man- 
aged and  paid  into  the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom  as  hereto- 
fore, and  all  prohibitions  in  connection  with  duties  and  excise,  and 
so  far  as  regards  articles  sent  out  of  Ireland,  and  all  matters  relating 


IRELAND  I    MR.    GLADSTONE'S    HOME    RULE    BILL.         285 

to  those  duties  shall  be  regulated  by  act  of  Parliament.  Excise 
duties  on  articles  consumed  in  Great  Britain  shall  be  paid  in  Great 
Britain,  or  to  an  officer  of  the  government  of  the  United  Kingdom, 
save  as  in  the  act  mentioned.  All  public  revenues  in  Ireland  shall  be 
paid  into  the  Irish  exchequer  and  for  a  consolidated  fund  appropri- 
ated to  the  public  service  of  Ireland  by  Irish  act.  If  the  duties  of 
excise  are  increased  above  the  rates  in  force  on  the  first  day  of  March, 
the  net  proceeds  in  Ireland  of  the  duties  in  excess  of  said  rates  shall 
be  paid  from  the  Irish  exchequer  to  the  exchequer  of  the  United 
Kingdom.  If  the  duties  of  excise  are  reduced  below  the  rates  in 
force  on  said  day,  and  the  net  proceeds  of  such  duties  in  Ireland  are 
in  consequence  less  than  the  net  proceeds  of  the  duties  before  reduc- 
tion, a  sum  equal  to  the  deficiency  shall,  unless  otherwise  agreed 
between  the  treasury  and  the  Irish  government,  be  paid  from  the 
exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom  into  the  Irish  exchequer. 

PROTECTING  ROYAL  PREROGATIVES. 

11.  The  hereditary  revenues  of  the  crown  in  Ireland,  which  are 
managed  by  the  Commissioners  of  her  Majesty's  woods,  forests,  and 
land  revenues,  shall  continue  during  the  life  of  her  present  Majesty 
and  shall  be  managed  and  collected  by  those  Commissioners.  The 
net  amount  payable  by  them  to  the  exchequer  on  account  of  those 
revenues,  after  deducting  all  expenses,  but  including  an  allowance 
for  interest  on  such  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  those  revenues  as  have  not 
been  reinvested  by  Ireland,  shall  be  paid  into  the  treasury  account 
(Ireland)  hereinafter  mentioned,  for  the  benefit  of  the  Irish 
exchequer. 

RELATING   TO   TAXATION. 

A  person  shall  not  be  required  to  pay  an  income  tax  in  Great 
Britain  in  respect  to  property  situate  er  business  carried  on  in  Ire- 
land, and  a  person  shall  not  be  required  to  pay  an  income  tax  in 
Ireland  in  respect  to  property  situate  or  business  carried  on  in  Great 
Britain.  For  the  purpose  of  giving  Ireland  the  benefit  of  the  differ- 
ence between  the  income  tax  collected  by  Great  Britain  from  the 
British  Colonial  and  foreign  securities  held  by  residents  of  Ireland 
and  the  income  tax  collected  by  Ireland  from  Irish  securities  held  by 
residents  of  Great  Britain,  there  shall  be  made  to  Ireland  out  of  the 
income  tax  collected  in  Great  Britain  an  allowance  of  such  an  amount 
as  may  from  time  to  time  be  determined  by  the  treasury,  in  accord- 
ance with  a  minute  of  the  treasury  laid  before  Parliament.  Before 
the  appointed  day  such  allowance  shall  be  paid  into  the  treasury 
account  (Ireland)  for  the  benefit  of  the  Irish  exchequer,  provided  that 
the  provisions  of  this  section  with  respect  to  the  income  tax  shall  not 
apply  to  any  excess  in  the  income  tax  of  Great  Britain  above  the  rate 
of  Ireland  or  to  the  rate  of  the  income  tax  of  Ireland  above  the  rate 
of  Great  Britain. 


286  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

DUTIES   AND   CUSTOMS. 

12.  The  duties  and  customs  contributed  by  Ireland  and  (save  as 
provided  in  this  act)  that  portion  of  the  public  revenues  of  the  United 
Kingdom  to  which  Ireland  may  claim  to  be  entitled,  whether  speci- 
fied in  the  third  schedule  or  not,  shall  be  carried  to  the  consolidated 
fund  of  the  United  Kingdom  as  the  contribution  of  Ireland  to  imperial 
liabilities  and  expenditures,  as  defined  in  the  schedule.      The  civil 
charges  of  the  government  of  Ireland  shall  be  subject,  as  in  this  act 
mentioned,  to  be  borne  after  the  appointed  day  by  Ireland.     After 
fifteen  years  from  the  passage  of  this  act  the  arrangements  made  by 
the   act  for  the  contribution  of  Ireland   to  imperial  liabilities   and 
expenditure,  and  otherwise  for  the  financial  relations  of  Ireland,  may 
be  revived  in  pursuance  of  an  address  to  Her  Majesty  from  the  House 
of  Commons  or  from  the  Irish  assembly. 

HOW  THE  BOOKS  SHALL  BE  KEPT. 

13.  There  shall  be  established  under  the  direction  of  the  treas- 
ury an  account,  in  this  act  referred  to  as  ';  treasury  account "    (Ire- 
land).    There  shall  be  paid  into  such  account  all  sums  payable  from 
the  Irish  exchequer  to  the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom,  or  from 
the  latter  to  the  former  exchequer.     All  sums  directed  to  be  paid  into 
such   account  for  the  benefit  of  either  of  said  exchequers,   and  all 
sums  which  are  payable  from  either  of  said  exchequers  to  the  other 
of  them,  or,  being  payable  out  of  one  of  said  exchequers,  are  payable 
by  the  other  exchequer,  shall  in  the  first  instance  be  payable  out  of 
said  account.     So  far  as  the  money  standing  on  account  is  sufficient 
for  the  purpose  of  meeting  such  sums,  the  treasury,  out  of  the  cus- 
toms revenues  collected  in  Ireland,  and  the  Irish  government,  out  of 
any  public  revenues  of  Ireland,  may  direct,  money  to  be  paid  into  the 
treasury  account  (Ireland)  instead  of  into  the  exchequer.     Any  sur- 
plus standing  on  account  of  the  credit  of  either  exchequer,  and  not 
required  for  meeting  payments,   shall  at  convenient  times  be  paid 
into  that  exchequer.     Any  sum  so  payable  into  the  exchequer  of  the 
Uni  ed   Kingdom   is  required  by  law  to  be  forthwith  paid   to   the 
National  Debt  Commissioners,  that  sum  paid  maybe  to  those  Commis- 
sioners without  being  paid  into  the  exchequer      All  sums  payable  by 
virtue  of  this  act  out  of  the  consolidated  fund  of  the  United  Kingdom 
or  of  Ireland,   shall   be   payable  from  the  exchequer  of  the  United 
Kingdom  or  of  Ireland,  as  the  case  may  be,  within  the  meaning  of 
this  act.      All  sums  by  this  act  made  payable  from  the  exchequer  of 
the  United  Kingdom,  shall,  if  not  otherwise  paid,  be  charged  on  or 
paid  out  of  the  consolidated  fund  of  the  United  Kingdom. 

CHARGES   AGAINST   THE   IRISH   EXCHEQUER. 

14.  There  shall  be  charged  on  the  Irish  consolidated  fund  in 
favor  of  the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom,  as  a  first  charge  on 


IRELAND  I    MR.    GLADSTONE'S    HOME    RULE    BILL.         287 

that  fund,  all  sums  which  are  payable  to  that  exchequer  from  the  Irish 
exchequer,  or  are  required  to  repay  to  the  exchequer  of  the  United 
Kingdom  sums  issued  to  meet  dividends  or  sinking  fund  on  guar- 
anteed land  stock  under  the  purchase  of  land  in  Ireland  act  of  1891, 
or  otherwise  have  been  or  are  required  to  be  paid  out  of  the  ex- 
chequer of  the  United  Kingdom  in  consequence  of  the  non-payment 
thereof  out  of  the  exchequer  of  Ireland  or  otherwise  by  the  Irish 
government.  If  at  any  time  the  Comptroller  or  Auditor-General  of 
the  United  Kingdom  is  satisfied  that  any  such  charge  is  due,  he  shall 
certify  the  amount,  and  the  treasury  shall  send  such  certificate  to  the 
Lord  Lieutenant,  who  shall  thereupon  by  order,  without  counter- 
signature,  direct  the  payment  of  the  amount  from  the  Irish  exchequer 
to  the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom,  and  such  order  shall  be 
duly  obeyed  by  all  persons.  Until  the  amount  is  wholly  paid  no 
other  payment  shall  be  made  out  of  the  Irish  exchequer  for  any  pur- 
pose whatever.  There  shall  be  charged  on  the  Irish  consolidated 
fund  next  after  the  foregoing  charge  all  funds  for  dividends  or  sink- 
ing fund  on  guaranteed  land  stock,  under  the  purchase  of  land  in  Ire- 
land act  of  1891,  which  the  land  purchase  account  and  guarantee 
fund  were  insufficient  to  pay;  all  sums  due  with  respect  to  any  debt 
incurred  by  the  government  of  Ireland,  whether  for  interest,  man- 
agement, or  for  sinking  fund;  an  annual  sum  of  £5,000  for  the  ex- 
penses of  the  household  and  establishment  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant, 
all  existing  charges  on  the  consolidated  fund  of  the  United  Kingdom 
in  respect  to  Irish  services,  other  than  the  salary  of  the  Lord  Lieu- 
tenant, the  salaries  and  pensions  of  all  judges  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
or  other  superior  courts  of  Ireland  or  any  county,  or  other  like  court 
who  may  be  appointed  after  the  passing  of  the  act,  and  are  not  ex- 
chequer judges  hereafter  mentioned.  Until  all  charges  created  by 
the  act  upon  the  Irish  consolidated  fund  and  f  r  the  time  being  due 
are  paid,  no  money  shall  be  issued  by  the  Irish  exchequer  for  any 
other  purpose  whatever. 

CHARGES  ON  CHURCH  PROPERTY. 

15.  All  existing  charges  on  Church  property  in  Ireland,  that  is, 
all  property  accruing  under  the  Irish  Church  Act  of  1869  and  trans- 
ferred to  the  Irish  Land  Commission  by  the  Irish  Church  Amendment 
Act  of  1881,  shall,  so  far  as  not  paid  out  of  said  property,  be  charged 
on  the  Irish  consolidated  fund.     Any  of  these  charges  guaranteed  by 
the  treasury,  if  and  so  far  as  not  paid,  shall  be  paid  out  of  the  exche- 
quer of  the  United  Kingdom.     Subject  to  existing  charges  thereon, 
said  church  property  shall  belong  to  the  Irish  government  and  shall 
be  managed,  administered,  and  disposed  of  as  directed  by  Irish  Act. 

16.  All  sums  paid  or  applicable  in  or  toward  the  discharge  of  the 
interest  or  principal  of  any  local  loan  advanced  before  the  appointed 
day,  on  the  security  of  Ireland  or  otherwise,  in  respect  to  such  loan, 


288  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

which  but  for  the  Act  would  be  paid  to  the  National  Debt  Commis- 
sioners and  carried  to  the  Local  Loans  Fund,  shall,  after  the 
appointed  day,  be  paid,  until  otherwise  provided  by  Irish  Act,  into 
the  Irish  exchequer  for  payment  to  the  Local  Loans  Fund  of  the 
principal  and  interest  of  such  loans.  The  Irish  Government  shall 
after  the  appointed  day  pay,  by  half-yearly  payments,  an  annuity  for 
forty-nine  years,  at  the  rate  of  14  per  cent,  on  the  principal  of  said 
loans,  exclusive  of  any  sums  written  off  before  the  appointed  day  for 
the  account  of  the  assets  of  the  Local  Loans  Fund.  Such  annuity 
shall  be  paid  from  the  Irish  exchequer  to  the  exchequer  of  the  United 
Kingdom,  and  when  so  paid  shall  forthwith  be  paid  to  the  National 
Debt  Commissioners  for  the  credit  of  the  Local  Loans  Fund.  After 
the  appointed  day  the  money  for  the  loans  to  Ireland  shall  cease  to 
be  advanced  either  by  the  Public  Works  Loan  Commissioners  or  out  of 
the  Local  Loans  Fund. 

RELATING   TO   THE   SETTLEMENT   OF   ESTATES. 

17.  So  much  of  any  act  as  directs  the  payment  to  the  local  taxa- 
tion (Ireland)  account  of  any  share  of  probate,   excise  of  customs 
duties  payable  to  the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom  shall,  together 
with  any  enactment   amending   the  same  be  repealed  as  from  the 
appointed  day,  without  prejudice  to  the  adjustment  of  balances  after 
that  day,  but  like  amounts  shall  continue  to  be  paid  on  the  local  tax- 
ation accounts  in  England  and  Scotland  as  would  have  been  paid  if 
this  act  had  not  passed.     Any  residue  of  said  shares  shall  be  paid  into 
the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom.     Stamp  duties,  chargeable  in 
respect  to  the  personality  of  a  deceased  person,  shall  not  in  case  the 
administration  was  granted   by  Great  Britain  be  chargeable  in  re- 
spect to  any  personality   situate  in  Ireland,  nor  in  case  administra- 
tion be  granted  in  Ireland  be  chargeable  with  respect  to  personality 
situate  in   Great  Britain.      Any   administration   granted   in   Great 
Britain  shall  not,  if  resealed  in  Ireland,  be  exempt  from  stamp  duty 
on  administration  granted  in  Ireland.     Any  administration  granted 
in  Ireland  shall  not,  if  resealed   in   Great  Britain,  be  exempt  from 
stamp  duty  on  administration  granted  in  Great  Britain. 

18.  Bills  appropriating    any  part  of  the  public  revenue  or  for 
imposing  a  tax,  shall  originate  in  the  legislative  assembly.     It  shall 
not  be  lawful  for  the  legislative  assembly  to  adopt  or  pass  a  vote, 
resolution,  address,  or  bill  for  an  appropriation  for  any  purpose  or 
any  tax  except  in  pursuance  of  the  recommendation  of  the  Lord  Lieu- 
tenant in  the  session  wherein  such  vote,  resolution,  address,  or  bill 
is  proposed. 

THE    JUDICIARY. 

19.  Two  Judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Ireland  shall  be  exchequer 
judges.  They  shall  be  appointed  under  the  great  seal  of  the  United 
Kingdom.  Their  salaries  and  pensions  shall  be  charged  to  and  paid 


IRELAND  :    MR.    GLADSTONE'S    HOME    RULE    BILL.          289 

out  of  the  consolidated  fund  of  the  United  Kingdom.  The  exchequer 
judges  shall  be  removable  only  by  her  Majesty  on  an  address  from 
the  two  houses  of  Parliament.  Each  such  Judge  shall,  save  as  other- 
wise provided  by  Parliament,  receive  the  same  salary  and  be  entitled 
to  the  same  pension  as  at  the  time  of  his  appointment,  fixed  for  puisne 
judges  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  during  his  continuance  in  office,  his 
salary  shall  not  be  diminished  or  his  right  to  a  pension  altered  with-~ 
out  his  consent.  Alterations  of  any  rules  relating  to  such  legal  pro- 
ceedings as  mentioned  in  this  section,  shall  not  be  made  except  with 
the  approval  of  her  Majesty  in  council.  The  sittings  of  the  excheq- 
uer judges  shall  be  regulated  by  like  approval.  All  legal  proceed- 
ings in  Ireland  which  are  instituted  at  the  instance  of  or  against  the 
treasury  or  the  commissioners  of  customs  or  their  officers,  or  which 
relate  to  the  election  of  members  of  Parliament,  or  touch  a  matter 
not  within  the  powers  of  the  Irish  legislature,  or  touch  a  matter 
affected  by  a  law  which  the  Irish  legisla  ure  has  not  power  to  repeal 
or  alter,  shall,  if  so  required  by  any  party  to  such  proceedings,  be 
heard  and  determined  before  exchequer  judges  or,  except  where  the 
case  requires  to  be  determined  by  two  judges  before  one  of  them.  In 
such  legal  proceedings  an  appeal  shall,  if  any  party  so  requires,  lie 
from  any  court  of  first  instance  in  Ireland  to  the  exchequer  judges. 
The  decision  of  the  exchequer  judges  'Shall  be  subject  to  appeal  to 
the  Queen  in  council  and  not  to  any  other  tribunal.  If  it  is  made  to 
appear  to  an  exchequer  judge  that  any  decree  or  judgment  in  such 
proceeding  as  aforesaid  is  not  duly  enforced  by  the  sheriff,  or  other 
officer  whose  duty  it  is  to  enforce  the  same,  such  judge  shall  appoint 
an  officer  whose  duty  it  shall  be  to  enforce  that  judgment.  For  that 
purpose  that  officer  and  all  persons  employed  by  him  shall  be  entitled 
to  the  same  privileges,  immunities,  and  powers  as  are  by  law  con- 
ferred upon  the  sheriff  and  his  officers.  Exchequer  judges  when  not 
engaged  in  hearing  and  determining  such  legal  proceedings  above 
mentioned  shall  perform  such  duties  ordinarily  performed  by  other 
judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Ireland  as  may  be  assigned  by  the 
Queen  in  council.  All  sums  recovered  by  the  treasury  or  the  com- 
missioners of  customs  or  their  officers,  or  recovered  under  any  act 
relating  to  customs,  shall,  notwithstanding  anything  in  any  other 
act,  be  paid  to  such  public  account  as  the  treasury  or  the  commis- 
sioners of  customs  shall  direct. 

MEANS   OF   COMMUNICATION. 

20.  From  the  appointed  day  the  postal  and  telegraph  service  of 
Ireland  shall  be  transferred  to  the  Irish  Government,  and  may  be 
regulated  by  Irish  act,  except  as  in  this  act  mentioned,  and  except  as 
regards  matters  relating  to  such  conditions  of  transmission  and  de- 
livery of  postal  packets  and  telegrams  as  are  incidental  to  duties  on 
postage,  or  foreign  mails,  or  submarine  telegraphs,  or  through  lines 


200  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

in  connection  therewith,  or  any  other  postal  or  telegraphic  business 
in  connection  with  places  out  of  the  United  Kingdom.  The  adminis- 
tration incidental  to  said  excepted  matters  shall,  save  as  may  other- 
wise be  arranged  with  the  Irish  postoffice,  rema  n  with  the  Postmaster 
General.  As  regards  revenue  and  expenses  of  the  postal  telegraph 
service,  the  Postmaster  General  shall  retain  the  revenues  collected 
and  defray  the  expenses  incurred  in  Great  Britain,  and  the  Irish  post- 
office  shall  retain  the  revenue  collected  and  defray  the  expenses  in- 
curred in  Ireland,  subject  to  the  fourth  schedule  of  this  act,  which 
schedule  shall  be  in  full  effect,  but  may  be  varied  or  added  to  by 
agreement  between  the  Postmaster  General  and  the  Irish  postoffice. 
Sums  payable  by  the  Postmaster  General  or  the  Irish  postoffice  to  the 
other  of  them  in  the  pursuance  of  this  act  shall,  if  not  paid  out  of  the 
postoffice  money,  be  paid  from  the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom 
or  of  Ireland,  as  the  case  require,  to  the  other  exchequer.  Sections 
48  to  53  of  the  telegraphic  act  of  1863  and  any  enactment  amending 
the  same  shall  apply  to  all  telegraphic  lines  of  the  Irish  Government 
in  a  like  manner  as  telegraphs  of  the  company  within  the  meaning 
of  the  act. 

REGULATING   POSTAL   SAVINGS   BANKS. 

21.  As  from  the  appointed  day  there  shall  be  transferred  to  the 
Irish  Government  the  postoffice  savings  banks  of  Ireland  and  all  such 
powers  and  duties  of  any  department  or  officer  of  Great  Britain  as  are 
connected  with  the  postoffice  savings  banks,  trusts  of  savings  banks, 
or  friendly  societies  in  Ireland,  and  the  same  may  be  regulated  by 
Irish  act,  the  treasury  shall  publish,  not  less  than  six  months  previous, 
a  notice  of  transfer  of  the  savings  banks.  If  before  due  transfer  any 
depositor  of  the  postoffice  savings  bank  requests  his  deposit  it  shall, 
according  to  his  request,  be  paid  to  him  or  transferred  to  the  post- 
office  savings  bank  of  Great  Britain.  After  said  date  the  depositors 
of  the  postoffice  savings  banks  of  Ireland  shall  cease  to  have  any 
claim  against  the  Postmaster  General  or  the  consolidated  fund  of  the 
United  Kingdom,  but  shall  have  a  like  claim  against  the  government 
of  the  consolidated  fund  of  Ireland.  If  before  the  date  of  transfer 
the  trustees  of  any  trustee  savings  bank  request,  then  according  to 
their  request  either  all  sums  due  them  shall  be  repaid  and  the  savings 
bank  closed,  or  those  sums  shall  be  paid  to  the  Irish  government,  and 
after  said  date  the  trustees  shall  cease  from  having  any  claim  against 
the  national  debt  commissioners  or  the  consolidated  fund  of  the  United 
Kingdom,  but  shall  have  a  like  claim  against  the  government  or  the 
consolidated  fund  of  Ireland.  Notwithstanding  the  foregoing  pro- 
visions, a  sum  due  on  account  of  any  annuity,  or  policy  of  insurance 
which  has  before  the  above-mentioned  notice  been  granted  through 
the  postoffice  or  a  trustee  savings  bank  is  not  paid  by  the  Irish  Gov- 
ernment, that  sum  shall  be  paid  out  of  the  exchequer  of  the  Uni-ted 
Kingdom. 


IRELAND  :    MR.    GLADSTONE'S    HOME    RULE    BILL.         291 
GOVERNING   APPEALS   FROM   COURT   DECISIONS. 

22.  Appeal  from  the  courts  of  Ireland  to  the  House  of  Lords  shall 
cease.     Where  any  persons  would  but  for  this  act  have  the  right  to 
appeal  from  any  court  in  Ireland  to  the  House  of  Lords,  such  person 
shall  have  the  right  to  appeal  to  the  Queen  in  council.     The  right  to 
so  appeal  shall  not  be  affected  by  any  Irish  act.     All   enactments 
relating  to  appeal  to  the  Queen  in  council  and  the  judicial  committee 
of  the  privy  council  shall  apply  accordingly.     When  the  judicial  com- 
mittee sit  in  hearing  upon  appeals  from  a  court  in  Ireland  there  shall 
be  present  not  less  than  four  lords  of  appeal  and  at  least  one  member 
who  is  or  has-been  a  judge  of  the   Supreme  Court  of  Ireland.     The 
rota  of  privy  councilors  to  sit  for  the  hearing  of  appeals  from  courts 
of  Ireland  shall  be  made  annually  by  her   Majesty  in  council.     The 
privy  councilors  or  some  of  them  on  that  rota  shall  sit  to  hear  appeals. 
A  casual   vacancy  in   such   rota   may  be  filled   by  order  of  council. 
Nothing  in  this  act  shall  affect  the  jurisdiction  of  the  House  of  Lords 
to  determine  claims  to  Irish  peerages. 

TO   AVOID  CONFLICT  OF  AUTHORITY. 

23.  If  it  appears  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant  or  the  Secretary  of  the 
State  expedient  for  the  public  interest  that  steps  be  taken  for  the 
speedy  determination  of  the  question  whether  any  Irish  act  or  any 
provision  thereof  is  beyond  the  powers  of  the  Irish  Legislature,  he 
may  represent  the  same  to  her  Majesty  in  council,  and  thereupon  said 
question  shall  forthwith  be  referred  to  and  heard  and  determined  by 
judicial  committee  of  the  privy  Council  constituted  as  if  hearing  and 
appeal  from  a  court  of  Ireland.     Upon  the  hearing  of  the  question 
such  persons  as  seem  to  the  judicial  committee  to  be  interested  may 
be  allowed  to  appear  and  be  heard  as  parties  to  this  case.     The  decis- 
ion of  the  judicial  committee  shall  be  given  in  like  manner,  as  if  it 
were  a  decision  on  appeal,  the  nature  of  the  report  or  recommenda- 
tion to  her  Majesty  being  stated  in  open  court.     Nothing  in  this  act 
shall  prejudice  any  other  power  of  her  Majesty  in  council   to  refer 
any  question  to  the  judicial  committee,  or  the  right  of  any  person  to 
petition  her  Majesty  for  such  reference. 

RELIGION   NO   BARRIER. 

24.  Notwithstanding  anything  to  the  contrary  in  any  act,  every 
subject  of  the  Queen  shall  be  qualified  to  hold  the  office  of   the  Lord 
Lieutenant  of  Ireland  without  reference  to  his  religious  belief.     The 
office  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant  shall  be  for  the  term  of  six  years,  with- 
out prejudice  to  the  power  of  the  Queen  at  any  time  to  revoke  the 
appointment. 

25.  The  Queen  in  Council  may  place  under  the  control   of  the 
Irish  Government  for  the  purposes  of   that  government  such  lands 
and  buildings  in  Ireland  as   are   vested  in  or  held   in   trust  for  Her 


^92  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Majesty,  subject  to  such  conditions  or  restrictions  as  may  seem  expe- 
dient. 

WHEN  JUDGES  MAY  BE  REMOVED. 

26.  A  judge  of  the  Supreme  Court,   or  other  superior  courts  of 
Ireland,  or  county  court,  or  other  court  with  like  jurisdiction  ap- 
pointed after  the  passage  of  this  act,  shall  not  be  removed  from  office 
except  in  pursuance  of  an  address  from  the  two  houses  of  the  legisla- 
ture, nor  during  his  continuance  in  office  shall  the  salary  be  dimin- 
ished or  the  right  of  pension  altered  without  his  consent. 

27.  All   existing  judges  of   the   Supreme  Court,   County   Court 
judges,  land  commissioners  in  Ireland,  and  all  existing. officers  serv- 
ing in  Ireland  in  the  permanent  civil   service  of   the  crown,  and  re- 
ceiving salaries  charged  to  the  consolidated  fund  of  the  United  King- 
dom, shall,  if  they  are  removable  at  present,  on  address  to  the  houses 
of  Parliament,  continue  removable  only  upon  such  address;  if  remov- 
able in  any  other  manner,  they  shall  continue  removable  only  in  the 
same  manner  as  heretofore.     They  shall  continue  to  receive  the  same 
salaries,  gratuities,  and  pensions,  and  shall  be  liable  to  perform  the 
same  duties  as  heretofore,  or  such  duties  as  her  Majesty  may  declare 
analogous.     Their  salaries  and  pensions  if,  and  as  far  as,  not  paid  out 
of  the  Irish  consolidated  fund,  shall  be  paid  out  of  the  exchequer  of 
the  United  Kingdom  provided  this  section  shall  be  subject  to  the 
provisions  of  the  act  with  respect  to  exchequer  judges.     If  any  of  the 
said   judges,  commissioners,  or  officers  retire  from  office  with  the 
Queens  approbation  before  the  completion  of  the  period  of  service 
entitling  them  to  a  pension,  her  Majesty  may,  if  she  thinks  it  fit, 
grant  a  pension  not  exceeding  the  pension  to  which  they  would,  on 
the  completion  of  their  period  of  service,  have  been  entitled. 

THE   REMAINING   CIVII^LIST. 

28.  All  the  existing  officers  of  the  permanent  civil  service  of  the 
crown  who  are  not  above  provided  for,  and  at  the  appointed  day  serv- 
ing Ireland  shall,  after  that  day,  continue  to  hold  their  offices  by  the 
same  tenure,  receive  the  same  salaries,  gratuities,  and  pensions,  and 
be  liable  to  perform  the  same  duties  as  heretofore,    or  such  duties  as 
the  treasury  may  declare  analogous  to  their  gratuities   and  pensions, 
and  until  three  years  after  the  passing  of  the  act  the  salaries  due  to 
any  officers,  if  remaining  in  the  existing  office,  shall  be  paid  to  the 
payee  by  the  treasury  out  of  the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom. 
Any  such  officer  may  after  three  years  from  the  passing  of  this  act 
retire  from  office,  and  shall  at  any  time  during  those  three  years  if 
required  by  the  Irish  government  retire  from  office,   and  on  such 
retirement  may  be  awarded  by  the  treasury  a  gratuity  or  pension, 
provided  that  a  six  months'  written  notice  shall,  unless  otherwise 
agreed,  be  given  either  by  said  officer  or  the  Irish  government;  and 
such  a  number  of  officers  only  shall  retire  at  one  time  and  at  such  in- 

\ 


IRELAND  :    MR.    GLADSTONE'S    HOME    RULE    BILL.  293 

tervals  of  time  as  the  treasury,  in  communication  with  the  Irish  gov- 
ernment, shall  sanction.  If  any  such  officer  does  not  so  retire  the 
treasury  may  award  him  after  the  said  three  years  a  pension.  The 
gratuities  and  pensions  awarded  in  accordance  with  the  act  shall  be 
paid  by  the  treasury  to  the  payees  out  of  the  exchequer  of  the  United 
Kingdom.  All  sums  paid  out  of  the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom 
in  pursuance  of  this  section,  shall  be  repaid  to  that  exchequer  from 
the  Irish  exchequer.  This  section  does  not  apply  to  officers  retained 
by  the  United  Kingdom. 

PENSIONS  TO  JUDGES. 

29.  Any  existing  pension  granted  on  account  of  service  in  Ireland 
as  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  or  any  court  consolidated  into  that 
court,  or  as  a  County  Court  Judge  or  any  other  judicial  position,  or  as 
an  officer  in  the  permanent  civil  service  of  the  Crown  other  than  an 
office-holder,  who  is  after  the  appointed  day  retained  in  the  service  of 
the  United  Kingdom,  shall  be  charged  on  the  Irish  consolidated  fund, 
and  if,  and  as  far  as,  it  is  not  paid  out  of  that  fund,  it  shall  be  paid 
out  of  the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom. 

TO   ABOLISH   THE   CONSTABULARY. 

30.  The  forces  of  the  Royal  Irish  constabulary  and  Dublin  metro- 
politan police  shall,  when  and  as  local  police  forces  are  from  time  to 
time  established  in  Ireland  in  accordance  with  the  sixth  schedule  of 
this  act,  be  gradually  reduced  and  ultimately  cease  to  exist  as  men- 
tioned in  the  schedule.     After  the  passing  of  this  act  no  officer  or  man 
shall  be  appointed  to  either  of  these  forces;  provided,  that  until  the 
expiration  of  six  years  from  the  appointed  day  nothing  in  the  act 
shall  require  the  Lord  Lieutenant  to  cause  either  of  said  forces  to 
cease  to  exist ;  if,  as  representing  the  Queen,  he  considers  it  expedient 
that  the  said  two  forces  shall  for  awhile  continue  and  be  subject  to 
the  control  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant,  representing  her  Majesty,  and 
the  members  thereof  shall   continue  to  receive  the   same   salaries, 
gratuities,  and  pensions,  and  shall  hold  appointments  of  the  same 
tenure  as  heretofore;  and  those  salaries,  gratuities,  pensions   and  all 
expenditure  incidental  to  either  of  the  forces  shall  be  paid  out  of  the 
exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom.     When  any  existing  member  of 
either  force   retires   under  the  provision  of  the  sixth   schedule  the 
treasury  may  award  a  gratuity  or  pension,  in  accordance  with  the 
schedule,  and  those  gratuities  or  pensions  and  all  existing  pensions 
payable  with  respect  to  the  service  of  either  force  shall  be  paid  by 
the  treasury  to  the  payees  out  of  the  exchequer  of  the  United  King- 
dom, and  two-thirds  of  the  net  amount  payable  in  pursuance  of  this 
section  out  of  the  exchequer  of  the  United  Kingdom  shall  be  repaid 
to  that  exchequer  from  the  Irish  exchequer. 


294:  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

» 
WILL   CHECK    THE   ACCOUNTS. 

31.  Save  as  may  be  otherwise  provided  by  Irish  act  the  existing" 
law  relating  to  the  exchequer  and  the  consolidated  fund  of  the  United 
Kingdom  shall  apply  with  necessary  modifications  to  the  exchequer 
and  consolidated  fund  of  Ireland.     An  official  shall  be  appointed  by 
the  Lord  Lieutenant  to  be  the  Irish  comptroller  and  auditor  general. 

32.  Subject  as  in  this  act,  particularly  to  the  seventh  schedule 
of  this  act,  all  existing  election  laws  relating  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons and  the  members  thereof  shall,  as  far  as  applicable,  extend  to 
each  of  the  houses  of  the  Irish  Legislature  and  the  members  thereof, 
but  such  election  laws  may  be  altered  in  accordance  with  the  Irish 
act,  and  the  privileges,  rights,  and  immunities  held  and  enjoyed  by 
each  house  and  the  members  thereof  shall  be  such  as  may  be  defined 
by  the  Irish  act,  but  so  that  the  same  shall  never  exceed  those  for  the 
time  being  held  and  enjoyed  by  the  House  of  Commons  and  the  mem- 
bers thereof. 

MAY   REPEAL   PROVISIONS   OF   THIS   ACT. 

33.  The  Irish  Legislature  may  repeal  or  alter  any  provision  of 
this  act,  which  is  by  this  act  expressly  made  alterable  by  that  Legis- 
lature; also,  any  enactments  in  force  in  Ireland,  except  such  as  either 
relate  to  matters  beyond  the  powers  of  the  Irish  Legislature,  or, 
being  enacted  by  Parliament  after  the  passing  of  this  act,  may  be 
expressly  extended  to  Ireland.      An  Irish  act,  notwithsianding  it  is 
in  any  respect  repugnant  to  any  enactment  excepted  as  aforesaid, 
shall,  though  read  subject  to  that  enactment,  be  valid  except  to  the 
extent  of  that  repugnancy.     An  order,  rule,  or  regulation  made  in 
pursuance  of  or  having  the  force  of  an  act  of  Parliament  shall  be 
deemed  to  be  an  enactment  within  in  the  meaning  of  this  section. 
Nothing  in  this  act  shall  affect  bills  relating  to  the  divorce  or  mar- 
riage of  individuals.     Any  such  bill  shall  be  introduced  and  proceed 
in  parliament  in  a  like  manner  as  if  this  act  was  not  passed. 

WHEN   LOANS  MAY  BE   CONTRACTED. 

34.  The   local   authority  of  any  county  or  borough  or  any  other 
area  fchall  not  borrow  money  without  either  the  special  authority  of 
the  Irish  Legislature  or  the  sanction  of  the  proper  department  of  the 
Irish  Government.     Such  authority  shall  not,  without  such   special 
authority,  borrow,  in  the  case   of  a  municipal  borough  or  town  or 
area  less  than  a  county  any  loan,  which,  together  with  the  then  out- 
standing debt  of  the  local  authority,  will  exceed  twice  the   annual 
ratable  value  of  the  property  of  municipal  borough,  town  or  area,  or. 
in  the  case  of  a  county  or  larger  area,  any  loan  which,  together  with 
the  then  outstanding  debt  of  the  local  authority,  will  exceed  one- 
tenth  of  the  annual  ratable  value  of  the  property  of  the  county  or 
area,  or  in  any  case,  a  loan  exceeding  one-half  the  above  limits  with- 


IRELAND  :    MR.   GLADSTONE'S    HOME    RULE    BILL.          295 

out  local  inquiry  held  in  the  county,  borough  or  area,  by  a  person  ap- 
pointed for  the  purpose  by  said  department. 

NO   LAND   LEGISLATION   FOB  THBEE   YEARS. 

35.  During  three  years  from  the  passing  of  the  act,  and  if  Parlia- 
ment is  then  sitting  until  the   end  of  that  session  of  Parliament,  the 
Irish  Legislature   shall   not  pass  an   act  respecting  the  relations  of 
landlord  and  tenant  or   the  sale,  purchase,  or  letting  of  land  gener- 
ally; provided  that  nothing   in  this  section  shall  prevent  the  passing 
of  any  Irish  act  with  a  view  to  the  purchase  of  land   for  railways, 
harbors,  water  works,  town  improvements,  or  other  local  undertak- 
ings.    During  six  years  from  the  passing  of  the  act,  the  appointment 
of  Judges  of  the  Supreme  Court  or  other  Superior  Court  in  Ireland, 
other  than  one  of  the  Exchequer  judges,  shall  be  made  in  pursuance 
of  a  warrant  from  Her  Majesty. 

36.  Subject  to  the  provisions  of  this  act  the  Queen  in  council  may 
make  or  direct  such  arrangements  as  may  seem  necessary  for  setting 
in  motion  the   Irish  Legislature  and  government,  and  for  otherwise 
bringing  the  act  into  operation.     The  Irish  Legislature  shall  be  sum- 
moned to   meet  the  first  Tuesday  in  September,  1894.     The  first  elec- 
tion for  members  of  the  houses  of  the  Irish  Legislature  shall  be  held 
such  a  time  before  that  day  as  may  be  fixed  by  her  Majesty  in  coun- 
cil.    Upon  the  first  meeting  of  the    Legislature  the   members  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  then  sitting  for  Irish  constituencies,  including 
the  members  for  Dublin  University,  shall  vacate  their  seats.     Writs 
shall,   as  soon   as   they   conveniently  may  be,  be  issued  by  the  Lord 
Chancellor  in   Ireland  for  the  purpose  of  holding  elections  for  mem- 
bers to  serve  in  Parliament  for  the  constituencies  named  in  the  second 
schedule  of  this  act.     The  existing  Chief  Baron  of  the  Exchequer  and 
the  senior  existing  puisne  Judges  of  the  Exchequer  division  of  the 
Supreme  Court,  or  if  they  or  either  of  them  be  dead  or  unable  or  un- 
willing to  act,  such   other  Judges  of  the   Supreme  Court  as  Her  Ma- 
jesty may  appoint,  shall  be  the  first  Exchequer  Judges.     Where  it 
appears  to  the  Queen  in  council  before  the  expiration  of  one  year 
after  the  appointed  day  that  any  existing  enactment  respecting  mat- 
ters within  the   powers  of  the  Irish  Legislature  requires  adaptation 
to  Ireland,  whether,  first,  by  substitution  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant  in 
council  or  any  department  or  office  of  the  executive  government  of 
Ireland  for  her  Majesty  in  council,  the    Secretary  of  State,  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  Postmaster  General,  board  of  inland  revenue  or  any 
other  public  department  or  officer  of  Great  Britain;  or,  second,  by  the 
substitution  of  the  Irish  consolidated  fund  or  moneys  provided  by 
the  Irish  legislature  for  the  consolidated  fund  of  the   United  King- 
dom, or  moneys  provided  by  Parliament;  or,  third,   by  the  substitu- 
tion of  confirmation  by,  or  other  act  to  be  done  by  or  to  the  Irish  leg- 
islature for  confirmation  bv  or  other  act  to  be  done  by  or  to  Parlia- 


296 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 


ment;  or,  fourth,  by  any  other  adaptation,  her  Majesty  by  order  of 
council  may  make  that  adaptation.  The  Queen  in  council  may  pro- 
vide for  the  transfer  of  such  property  rights  and  liabilities  and  the 
doing  of  such  other  things  as  appear  to  her  Majesty  necessary  and 
proper  for  carrying  into  effect  this  act,  or  any  order  in  council  under 
this  act.  An  order  in  council  under  this  section  may  make  adapta- 
tion or  provide  for  transfer,  either  unconditionally  or  subject  to  such 
exceptions,  conditions  or  restrictions  as  may  seem  expedient.  A  draft 
of  every  order  in  council  under  this  section  shall  be  laid  before  both 
Houses  of  Parliament  for  not  less  than  two  months  before  it  is  made. 
Such  order  when  made  shall  be  subject  as  respects  Ireland  to  the 
provisions  of  the  Irish  Act,  have  full  effect,  but  shall  not  interfere 
with  the  continued  application  to  any  place,  authority,  person  or 
thing  not  in  Ireland,  of  the  enactment  to  which  the  order  relates. 

37.  Except  as  otherwise  provided  by  this  Act,  all  existing  laws, 
institutions,    authorities  and   officers  of  Ireland,   whether  judicial, 
administrative  or  ministerial  and  all  existing  taxes  for  Ireland,  shall 
continue  as  if  this  Act  had  not  been  passed,  but  with  modifications, 
necessary  for  adapting  the  same  to  this  Act  and  subject  to  be  repealedj 
abolished,   altered  of  adapted  in   the  manner  and  not  the  extent 
authorized  by  this  Act. 

38.  Subject  as  in  this  Act  mentioned,  the  appointed  day  for  the 
purposes  of  this  Act  shall  be  the  day  of  the  first  meeting  of  the  Irish 
Legislature,  or  such  other — not  more  than  seven  months  earlier  or 
later,  as  may  be  fixed  by  order  of  her  Majesty  in  council  either  gener- 
ally or  with  reference  to  any  particular  provision  of  this  Act.     Differ- 
ent days   may   be   appointed   for   different    purposes  and  different 
provisions  of  this  Act. 

First  Schedule — Legislative  Council  constituencies  shall  consist 
as  follows : 

Galway 2 

Kerry 1 

Kildare 1 

Kilkenny 1 

Kings 1 

Leitrim  and  Sligo. .  1 

Limerick . .  .2 

Londonderry 1 

Longford 1 

Louth 1 

Mayo 1 


Antrim 3 


Carlo  w  

1 

1 

Clare  

1 

Cork,  East  Riding. 
Cork,  West  Riding  . 
Donegal     

.3 
.1 
1 

Down    

Dublin   

^ 

Fermanagh  

1 

Boroughs  : 
Dublin  .  . 

?, 

Meath           

1 

Monaghan  

.  .    .1 

Queens  

...   1 

Roscommon 

1 

Tipperary         .  . 

Tyrone  

1 

Waterf  ord  .... 

..1 

West  Meath  .  .  . 

1 

Wexford  

..     1 

Wicklow  .  . 

,    > 

Belfast. 


Cork 1 


IRELAND  :    MR.   GLADSTONE'S   HOME    RULE   BILL.         297 


Second  Schedule— Irish  members  in  House  of  Commons  shall  be 
apportioned  as  follows : 


Antrim 3 

Armagh 2 

Carlow ,.1 

Cavan 2 

Clare 2 

Cork..  ..5 


Kerry 3 

Kildare 1 

Kilkenny 1 

King's 1 

Leitrim 2 

Limerick 2 


Donegal. 


.  3       Londonderry 2 


Down 3  Longford 1 

Dublin 2  Louth 1 

Fermanagh 1  Mayo 3 

Galway 3  Meath 2 

Boroughs  : 

Galway 1 

Kilkenny 1 


Belfast 4 

Cork 2 

Dublin..  ..4 


Limerick 


Monaghan 2 

Queens 1 

Roscommon 2 

Sligo  2 

Tipperary 3 

Tyrone 3 

Waterford 1 

West  Meatb 1 

Wexf  ord 2 

Wicklow  ....  . .  1 


Derry i 

Newry 1 

Waterford..,  .  .1 


FINANCIAL   LIABILITIES. 

Third  Schedule — The  imperial  liabilities  shall  consist  of  the 
funded  and  unfunded  debt  of  the  United  Kingdom,  inclusive  of 
terminable  annuities  paid  out  of  the  permanent  annual  charge  for 
the  national  debt,  inclusive  of  the  cost  of  management  of  said  funded 
and  unfunded  debt,  but  exclusive  of  local  loans,  stock,  and  guaranteed 
land  stock  and  the  cost  of  management  thereof,  and  all  other  charges 
on  the  consolidated  funds  of  the  United  Kingdom  for  the  repayment 
of  borrowed  money  or  the  fulfillment  of  guaranteed  expenditures. 
For  the  purpose  of  this  act  the  imperial  expenditure  shall  consist  of 
the  naval  and  military  expenditure;  civil  expenditure,  that  is  to  say, 
the  civil  list  and  royal  family  salaries,  pensions,  allowances,  inci- 
dental expenses  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  exchequer  judges 
in  Ireland,  buildings,  works,  salaries,  pensions,  printing,  stationery 
allowances,  and  incidental  expenses  of  parliament;  the  national  debt 
commissioners;  foreign  office;  diplomatic  and  consular  service,  includ- 
ing secret  service,  special  service  and  telegraph  subsidies;  the  Colonial 
office,  including  special  services  and  telegraph  subsidies;  the  Privy 
Council;  Board  of  Trade;  the  mint;  the  meterologic  service;  the  slave 
trade;  the  service  of  foreign  mails  and  telegraphic  communication 
with  places  outside  the  United  Kingdom.  The  public  revenue,  to  a 
portion  of  which  Ireland  may  claim  to  be  entitled,  consists  of  revenue 
from  these  sources  :  Suez  Canal  shares;  loans  and  advances  to  foreign 
countries;  annual  payments  by  the  British  possessions;  fees,  stamps, 
and  extra  receipts  received  by  departments,  the  expenses  of  which 
are  a  part  of  the  imperial  expenditure;  and  the  small  branches  of 
the  hereditary  revenues  from  the  crown  foreshores. 


L198  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

PROVISIONS   FOR   THE   POSTOFFICE. 

Fourth  Schedule — The  Postmaster  General  shall  pay  the  Irish 
postoffice  with  respect  to  foreign  mails  sent  through  Ireland,  and  the 
Irish  postoffices  shall  pay  the  Postmaster  General  with  respect  to 
foreign  mails  sen-t  through  Great  Britain  such  sums  as  may  be  agreed 
upon  for  the  carriage  of  those  mails.  The  Irish  postoffice  shall  pay 
the  Postmaster  General  one-half  the  expense  of  the  packet  service, 
the  submarine  and  telegraph  lines  between  Great  Britain  and  Ireland 
after  deducting  from  that  expense  the  sum  fixed  by  the  Postmaster 
General  as  incurred  on  account  of  the  foriegn  mails  or  telegraphic 
communication  with  places  out  of  the  United  Kingdom,  and  five  per 
cent  of  the  expense  of  conveyance  outside  the  United  Kingdom  of  the 
foreign  mails  and  the  transmission  of  telegrams  to  places  outside  the 
United  Kingdom.  The  Postmaster  General  or  the  Irish  postoffices 
shall  pay  one  to  the  other  of  them  on  account  foreign  money  orders 
as  compensation  with  respect  to  postal  packets  such  sums  as  may  be 
agreed  upon. 

Fifth  Schedule— (Blank). 

POLICE  REGULATIONS. 

Sixth  Schedule — Such  local  police  forces  shall  be  established, 
under  such  local  authorities  and  for  such  counties,  municipal  bor- 
oughs or  other  larger  areas  as  shall  be  provided  by  Irish  act.  When- 
ever the  executive  committee  of  the  Privy  Council  of  Ireland  shall 
certify  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant  that  a  police  force  adequate  for  local 
purposes  has  been  established  in  any  area,  then  he  shall  within  six 
months  thereafter  direct  the  Royal  Irish  Constabulary  to  be  with- 
drawn from  the  performance  of  regular  police  duties  in  such  area. 
Upon  any  such  withdrawal  the  Lord  Lieutenant  shall  order  measures 
to  be  taken  for  a  proportionate  reduction  of  the  members  of  the  Royal 
Irish  Constabulary.  Upon  the  executive  committee  of  the  Privy 
Council  certifying  to  the  Lord  Lieutenant  that  adequate  local  police 
forces  have  been  established  in  every  part  of  Ireland,  then  the  Lord 
Lieutenant  shall,  within  six  months  after  such  certificate,  order 
measures  to  be  taken  for  causing  the  whole  Royal  Irish  Constabulary 
force  to  cease  to  exist  as  a  police  force.  Wherever  the  area  in  which 
a  local  police  force  is  established  is  part  of  the  Dublin  metropolitan 
police  district,  the  foregoing  regulations  shall  apply  to  the  Dublin 
metropolitan  police. 

Seventh  Schedule — Regulations  as  to  the  House  of  the  Legisla- 
ture, the  members  thereof,  and  the  legislative  council.  There  shall 
be  a  separate  register  of  the  electors  and  councilors  of  the  legislative 
council,  which  shall  be  made  until  otherwise  provided  by  Irish  act,  in 
like  manner  with  the  parliamentary  register  of  electors.  Writs  shall 
be  issued  for  the  election  of  councilors  at  such  time,  not  less  than  one 


IRELAND  :    MR.  GLADSTONE^    HOME    RULE    BILL.          299 

nor  more  than  three  months  before  the  day  for  the  periodical  retire 
ment  of  councillors,  as  the  Lord  Lieutenant  in  council  shall  fix. 

LEGISLATIVE   ASSEMBLY. 

The  Parliamentary  register  for  electors  for  the  time  being,  and 
until  otherwise  provided  by  Irish  act,  shall  be  the  register  of  electors 
of  the  legislative  assembly. 

BOTH   HOUSES. 

Annual  sessions  of  the  Legislature  shall  be  held.  Any  peer, 
whether  of  the  United  Kingdom  or  Great  Britain,  England,  Scotland 
or  Ireland,  shall  be  qualified  to  be  a  member  of  either  house,  but  the 
same  person  shall  not  be  a  member  of  both  houses.  Until  otherwise 
provided  by  Irish  act,  if  the  same  person  is  elected  to  a  seat  in  each 
house,  he  shall,  before  the  eighth  day  after  the  next  sitting  of  either 
house,  elect  in  which  house  he  will  serve.  Upon  his  making  such 
election  the  seat  in  the  other  house  will  be  declared  vacant.  If  he 
does  not  so  elect  the  seats  in  both  houses  will  be  vacant. 

The  Lord  Lieutenant  in  council  may  make  regulations  for  sum- 
moning the  two  houses  of  the  Legislature  of  Ireland,  and  he  may 
issue  writs,  and  may  do  any  other  thing  appearing  necessary  for  the 
election  of  members  of  the  two  houses  for  the  election  of  a  chairman, 
whether  called  "Speaker,"  "President,"  or  any  other  name  in  each 
house  for  a  quorum  of  each  house,  for  communications  between  the 
two  houses,  and  the  adaptation  to  the  two  houses  and  the  members 
thereof  of  any  laws  or  customs  relating  to  the  House  of  Commons 
and  the  deliberation  and  voting  together  of  the  two  houses,  in  cases 
provided  by  this  act. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  GREEKS. 

The  Isles  of  Greece,  the  Isle  of  Greece, 

Where  burning  Sappho  loved  and  sung; 
Where  grew  the  arts  of  war  and  peace, 

Where  Delos  rose  and  Phoebus  sprung. 
Eternal  summer  gilds  them  yet, 
But  all  except  their  sin  is  set.  — Lord  Byron. 

The  crisis  in  the  history  of  modern  Greece  stirred  the 
heart  of  Mr.  Gladstone  to  intense  excitement  and  interest. 
In  championing  the  cause  of  those  descendants  of  the  old 
heroic  race,  Mr.  Gladstone  has  not  opened  himself  in  plain 
language  concerning  the  European  powers.  The  message 
is  in  the  form  of  a  letter  written  to  the  Duke  of  West- 
minster. The  following  is  the  full  text : 

"Mr  DEAR  DUKE  OF  WESTMINSTER: — Had  we  at  the  pres- 
ent date  been  in  our  ordinary  relation  of  near  neighborhood 
you  would  have  run  no  risk  of  being  addressed  by  me  in 
print  without  your  previous  knowledge  or  permission.  But 
the  present  position  of  the  eastern  question  is  peculiar. 
Transactions — such  only  for  the  moment  I  am  content  to 
call  them — have  been  occurring  in  the  east  at  short  inter- 
vals during  the  last  two  years  of  such  a  nature  as  to  stir 
our  common  humanity  from  its  innermost  recesses  and  to 
lodge  a  trustworthy  appeal  from  the  official  to  the  personal 
conscience.  Until  the  most  recent  dates  these  transactions 
had  seemed  to  awaken  no  echo  save  in  England,  but  now  a 
light  has  flashed  at  least  upon  western  Europe  and  an  uneasy 
consciousness  that  nations  as  well  as  cabinets  are  concerned 
in  what  has  been  and  is  going  on  has  taken  strong  hold  upon 
the  public  mind,  and  the  time  seems  to  have  come  when 
men  should  speak  or  be  forever  silent." 

300 


THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  GREEKS.  301 

My  ambition  is  for  rest,  and  rest  alone.  But  every  grain 
of  sand  is  part  of  the  seashore,  and,  connected  as  I  have 
been  for  nearly  half  a  century,  with  the  eastern  question, 
often  when  in  positions  of  responsibility,  I  feel  that  inclina- 
tion does  not  suffice  to  justify  silence.  In  yielding  to  this 
belief  I  keep  another  conviction  steadily  in  view — namely, 
that  to  infuse  into  this  discussion  the  spirit  of  language  of 
party  would  be  to  give  a  cover  and  an  apology  to  every 
sluggish  and  unmanly  mind  for  refusing  to  offer  its  tribute 
to  a  common  cause,  and  I  have  felt  that,  taking  into  view 
the  attitude  you  have  consistently  held  in  our  domestic 
politics  during  the  last  decade  of  years,  I  can  offer  to  my 
countrymen  of  all  opinions  no  more  appropriate  guarantee 
of  my  careful  fidelity  to  this  conviction  than,  if  only  by  the 
exercise  of  an  unusual  freedom,  to  place  the  expression  of 
my  views  under  shelter  of  your  name. 

It  is  more  easy  thus  to  forego  the  liberty  and  license  of 
partisanship  because  it  is  my  firm  inward  belief  that  the 
deplorable  position  which  the  concerted  action  or  non -action 
of  the  powers  of  Europe  has  brought  about  and  maintained, 
has  been  mainly  due,  not  to  a  common  accord  but  to  a  want 
of  it;  that  the  unwise  and  mistaken  views  of  some  of  the 
powers  have  brought  dishonor  upon  the  whole,  and  that 
when  the  time  comes  for  the  distribution  with  full  knowl- 
edge of  praise  and  blame,  it  will  not  be  on  the  British  gov- 
ernment or  on  those  in  sympathy  with  it  that  the  heaviest 
sentence  of  condemnation  will  descend.  Let  us  succinctly 
review  the  situation. 

The  Armenian  massacres,  judiciously  interspersed  with 
intervals  of  breathing  time,  have  surpassed  in  their  scale 
and  in  the  intensity  and  diversity  of  their  wickedness  all 
modern,  if  not  all  historical  experience.  All  this  was  done 
under  the  eyes  of  six  powers,  who  were  represented  by  their 
ambassadors,  and  who  thought  their  feeble  verbiage  a  suf- 
ficient counterpoise  to  the  instruments  of  death,  shame,  and 


302  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

torture,  provided  if  in  framing  it  they  all  chimed  in  with 
one  another.  Growing  in  confidence  with  each  successive 
triumph  of  deeds  over  words,  and  having  exhausted  in  Ar- 
menia every  expedient  of  deliberate  and  wholesale  wicked- 
ness, the  sultan,  whom  I  have  not  scrupled  to  call  the  great 
assassin,  recollected  that  he  had  not  yet  reached  his  climax. 
It  yet  remained  to  show  to  the  powers  and  their  ambassa- 
dors, under  their  own  eyes  and  within  the  hearing  of  their 
own  ears,  in  Constantinople  itself,  what  their  organs  were 
too  dull  to  see  and  hear. 

From  amid  the  fastnesses  of  the  Armenian  hills,  to  this 
height  of  daring  he  boldly  ascended,  and  his  triumph  was 
not  less  complete  than  before.  They  did,  indeed,  make 
bold  to  interfere  with  his  prerogatives  by  protecting  or  ex- 
porting some  Armenians  who  would  otherwise  have  swelled 
the  festering  heaps  of  those  murdered  in  the  streets  of  Con- 
stantinople, but  as  to  punishment,  reparation,  or  even  pre- 
vention, the  world  has  yet  to  learn  that  any  one  of  them 
was  effectually  cared  for.  Every  extreme  of  wickedness  is 
sacrosanct  when  it  passes  in  Turkish  garb.  All  comers  may, 
as  in  a  tournament  of  old,  be  challenged  to  point  to  any  two 
years  of  diplomatic  history  which  have  been  marked  by  more 
glaring  inequality  of  forces;  by  more  uniform  and  complete 
success  of  weakness  combined  with  wrong,  over  strength 
associated  with  right,  of  which  it  had,  unhappily,  neither 
consciousness  nor  confidence;  by  so  vast  an  aggregation  of 
blood-red  records  of  massacre,  or  by  so  profound  a  disgrace 
inflicted  upon  and  still  clinging  as  a  shirt  of  Nessus  to  col- 
lective Europe. 

All  these  terrible  occurrences  the  six  powers  appear  to 
treat  as  past  and  gone,  as  dead  and  buried.  They  forget 
that  everyone  of  them  will  revive  in  history,  to  say  nothing 
of  a  higher  record  still,  and  in  proceeding  calmly  to  handle 
those  further  developments  of  the  great  drama  which  is  now 
in  progress  they  appear  blissfully  unconscious  that  at  every 


THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  GKEEKS.  303 

step  they  take  they  are  treading  on  the  burning  cinders  of 
the  Armenian  massacres. 

To  inform  and  sway  the  public  mind  amid  the  disastrous 
confusions  of  the  last  two  years  there  have  been  set  up  as 
supreme  and  guiding  ideas  those  expressed  firstly  in  the 
phrase  "The  Concert  of  Europe"  and  secondly  "The  In- 
tegrity of  the  Turkish  Empire."  Of  these  phrases  the  first 
denotes  an  instrument  indescribably  valuable  where  it  can 
be  made  available  for  purposes  of  good,  but  it  is  an  instru- 
ment only,  and  as  such  it  must  be  tried  by  the  question  of 
adaptation  to  its  ends.  When  it  can  be  made  subservient 
to  the  purposes  of  honor,  duty,  liberty  and  humanity,  it 
has  the  immense  and  otherwise  unattainable  advantage  of 
leaving  the  selfish  aims  of  each  power  to  neutralize  and  de- 
stroy one  another,  and  of  acting  with  resistless  force  for  such 
objects  as  will  bear  the  light. 

In  the  years  1876-80  it  was  the  influence  of  England  in 
European  diplomacy  which  principally  distracted  the  con- 
cert of  the  powers.  In  determining  the  particulars  of  the 
treaty  of  Berlin,  she  made  herself  conspicuous  by  taking  the 
side  least  favorable  to  liberty  in  the  last.  In  that  state  of 
things  I  for  one  used  my  best  exertions  to  set  up  a  European 
concert.  In  public  estimation  it  would  at  least  have  quali- 
fied our  activity  in  the  support  of  Turkey,  which  had  then 
sufficiently  displayed  her  iniquitous  character  and  policy  in 
Bulgaria,  though  she  has  since  surpassed  herself. 

When  the  ministry  of  1880  came  into  power  we  made  it 
one  of  our  first  objects  to  organize  a  European  concert  for 
the  purpose  of  procuring  the  fulfillment  of  two  important 
provisions  of  the  treaty  of  1878,  referring  to  Montenegro 
and  to  Greece,  respectively.  Fair  and  smiling  were  the 
first  results  of  our  endeavors.  The  forces  of  suasion  had 
been  visibly  exhausted  and  the  emblems  of  force  were  ac- 
cordingly displayed,  a  squadron  consisting  of  ships  of  war 
carrying  the  flags  of  each  of  the  powers,  being  speedily 


304  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

gathered  on  the  Montenegrin  or  Albanian  coast.  But  we 
soon  discovered  that  for  several  of  the  powers  ' '  concert  of 
Europe "  bore  a  signification  totally  at  variance  with  that 
which  we  attached  to  it,  and  that  it  included  toy  demonstra- 
tions which  might  be  made  under  a  condition  that  they 
should  not  pass  into  reality. 

We  did  not  waste  our  time  in  vain  endeavors  to  galvanize 
a  corpse,  but  framed  a  plan  for  the  seizure  of  an  important 
port  of  the  sultan's  dominions.  To  this  we  confidently  be- 
lieved that  some  of  the  powers  would  accede,  and  in  concert 
with  these  we  prepared  to  go  forward.  It  hardly  needs  be 
said  that  we  found  our  principal  support  in  wise  and  brave 
Alexander  II.,  who  then  reigned  over  Russia?  Still  less 
need  it  be  specified  that  there  was  no  war  in  Europe,  though, 
doubtless,  this  bugbear  would  have  been  used  for  intimida- 
tion, had  our  proceedings  passed  beyond  the  stage  of  privacy; 
but  the  effect  was  perfect — the  effect  produced,  be  it  ob- 
served, on  Abdul  Hamid,  on  him  who  has  since  proved  him- 
self to  be  the  great  assassin.  Our  plan  became  known  to 
the  sultan,  and  without  our  encountering  a  single  serious 
difficulty,  Montenegro  obtained  the  considerable  extension 
which  she  now  enjoys,  and  Thessaly  was  added  to  Greece. 

But  as  nothing  can  be  better,  nay,  nothing  so  good, 
as  the  "concert  of  Europe, "  where  it  can  be  made  to  work; 
so,  as  the  best  when  in  its  corruption  always  changes  to  the 
worst,  nothing  can  be  more  mischievous  than  the  pretense 
to  be  working  with  this  tool  when  it  is  not  really  in  working 
order.  The  concert  of  Europe  then  comes  to  mean  the  con- 
cealment of  dissents,  the  lapse  into  generalities,  and  the  set- 
tling down  upon  negotiations  at  junctures  when  duty  loudly 
calls  for  positive  action.  Lord  Granville  was  the  mildest 
of  men,  but  mildness  may  keep  company  with  resolution, 
and  we  have  seen  how  he  dealt  with  the  ' '  concert  of  Europe, " 
Very  brief  intercommunications  enable  a  man  of  common 
sense  to  see  in  cases  where  the  principles  involved  are  clear, 


THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  GREEKS.  305 

whether  there  is  a  true  concert.  But  the  mischief  of  setting 
up  a  false  one  is  immense.  Let  us  look  at  it  in  some  of  its 
aspects. 

First,  the  criminal  at  once  becomes  aware  of  it,  and  sets 
to  work  to  natter  and  seduce  the  power  he  may  have  reason 
to  suppose  best  inclined.  Secondly,  what  is  the  composition 
of  the  body  ?  A  cabinet  can  work  together  because  it  has  a 
common  general  purpose,  and  this  purpose  has  a  unifying 
effect  on  particular  questions  as  they  arise.  But  the  powers 
of  Europe  have  no  such  common  purpose  to  bring  them  to- 
gether. Lastly,  and  what  is  worst  of  all,  this  pretended  and 
ineffectual  co-operation  of  governments  shuts  out  the  peoples. 
It  is  from  this  mischief  that  we  are  now  suffering.  It  is 
difficult  enough  for  a  people  to  use  ad  hoc,  a  sufficient  in- 
fluence over  its  own  government  standing  single:  But  what 
is  our  case  when  we  find  ourselves  standing  in  the  face  of 
our  government  with  five  other  governments  behind  it,  which 
we  cannot  call  to  account  and  over  which  we  cannot  reason- 
ably expect  to  exercise  the  smallest  influence  ?  It  is  time  to 
speak  with  freedom. 

At  this  moment  two  great  states,  with  a  European  popu- 
lation of  140,000,000  or  perhaps  150,000,000,  are  under  the 
government  of  two  young  men,  each  bearing  the  high  title 
of  emperor,  but  in  one  case  wholly  without  knowledge  or 
experience;  in  the  other,  having  only  such  knowledge  and 
experience,  in  truth  limited  enough,  as  have  excited  much 
astonishment  and  some  consternation  when  an  inkling  of 
them  has  been  given  to  the  world.  In  one  case  the  govern- 
ment is  a  pure  and  perfect  depotism,  and  in  the  other  equiva- 
lent to  it  in  matters  of  foreign  policy,  so  far  as  it  can  be 
understood  in  a  land  where  freedom  is  indigenous,  familiar 
and  full  grown.  These  powers,  so  far  as  their  sentiments 
are  known,  have  been  using  their  power  in  concert  to  fight 
steadily  against  freedom.  But  why  are  we  to  have  our 
government  pinned  to  their  apron-strings  ?  The  sense  of 


306  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

this  nation  is  for  them  non-existent,  and  the  German  emperor 
would  lie  well  within  his  limits  should  he  design  to  say  to 
us  :  "  Turkey  I  know,  and  the  concert  I  know,  but  who 
are  ye  ? " 

At  the  heels  of  this  concert  we  have  plodded  patiently  for 
two  years,  and  what  has  it  done  for  us — done  for  us,  not  in 
promoting  justice  and  humanity,  for  that  question  has  long 
ago  been  answered,  but  in  securing  peace  ?  I  affirm  that 
with  all  its  pretentions  and  its  power,  it  has  worsened  and 
not  bettered  the  situation.  When  we  pointed  to  the  treaty 
obligations  and  the  treaty  rights  which  solemnly  and 
separately  bound  us  to  stop  the  Armenian  massacres,  we 
were  threatened  by  the  credulity  of  some  and  the  hypocrisy 
of  others,  with  the  European  war  as  a  consequence  of  any 
coercive  measure,  however  disinterested,  which  we  might 
adopt  for  checking  crimes  sufficient  to  make  the  stones  cry  out. 

Well,  intimidations  of  this  kind  carried  the  day,  and  to 
the  six  powers,  in  their  majesty  and  might,  with  their  armies 
numbered  by  millions  of  men  and  resources  measured  by 
hundreds  of  millions  of  pounds  a  year,  was  intrusted  the  care 
of  the  public  peace.  It  was  not  a  very  difficult  task.  There 
was  not  a  real  breath  of  war  in  the  air  two  years  and 
one  year  ago.  Now  Turkey  has  a  casus  belli  against  Greece. 
Greece  has  a  casus  belli  against  the  powers.  Turkey  may 
have  one  against  them  too,  were  it  to  her  interest  to  raise 
it.  So  far  as  Turkey  and  Greece  are  concerned,  this  is  no 
mere  abstraction,  and  Europe  flutters  from  day  to  day  with 
anxiety  to  know  whether  there  is  or  is  not  war  on  the  Thes- 
salian  frontier.  It  is  surely  time  that  we  should  have  done, 
at  least  for  the  present  occasion,  with  the  gross  and  palpable 
delusion,  under  which  alone  we  can  hope  for  effectual  deal- 
ing by  a  European  concert  with  the  present  crisis  in  the 
east.  It  is  time  to  shake  off  the  incubus  and  to  remember, 
as  in  the  days  of  old,  that  we  have  an  existence,  a  character 
and  a  duty  of  our  own. 


THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  GREEKS.  307 

But  then  we  are  told  by  the  German  emperor  and  others 
that  we  can  only  have  reforms  in  Turkey  on  the  condition 
of  maintaining  the  integrity  of  the  Ottoman  Empire.  At 
one  time  this  phrase  had  a  meaning  and  was  based  upon  a 
theory,  a  theory  propounded  by  men  of  such  high  authority 
as  Lord  Palmerston  and  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe.  It 
was  that  Turkey,  if  only  she  were  sheltered  by  European 
power  from  the  hostility  of  her  neighbor,  was  alike  disposed 
and  competent  to  enter  into  the  circle  of  the  civilized 
powers.  The  shelter  prayed  for  was  assured  by  the  Crimean 
war.  After  the  peace  of  Paris  in  1856  she  enjoyed  twenty 
years  of  absolute  immunity  from  foreign  alarms.  In  no 
point  or  particular  save  one,  did  she  fulfill  the  anticipation 
proclaimed  on  her  behalf.  She  showed  herself  the  match 
for  any  European  state  in  wanton  expenditures  and  in  rapid 
accumulation  of  debt,  to  which  she  added  the  natural  sequel 
in  shameless  robbery  of  her  creditors.  It  was  at  the  cost 
of  300,000  lives  and  of  three  hundred  millions  of  money, 
that  the  question  of  Turkey's  capacity  to  take  rank  among 
the  civilized  nations  was  brought  to  a  conclusive  test,  nega- 
tively, through  the  total  failure  of  the.  scheme  of  internal 
reform,  and,  alas  !  positively  through  the  horrible  outrages 
which  desolated  Bulgaria,  and  brought  about  fresh  mutila- 
tions of  the  territory. 

It  shows  an  amazing  courage  or  an  amazing  infatuation 
that  after  a  mass  of  experience,  alike  deplorable  and  conclu- 
sive, the  rent  and  ragged  catchword  of  "integrity  of  the 
Ottoman  Empire"  should  still  be  flaunted  in  our  eyes.  Has 
it  then,  a  meaning?  Yes,  and  it  had  a  different  meaning  to 
almost  every  decade  of  the  century  now  expiring.  »  In  the 
first  quarter  of  that  century  it  meant  that  Turkey,  though 
her  system  was  poisoned  and  effete,  still  occupied  in  right 
of  actual  sovereignty,  the  whole  southeastern  corner  of  Eu- 
rope, appointed  by  the  Almighty  to  be  one  of  its  choicest 
portions.  In  1830  it  meant  that  this  baleful  sovereignty 


308  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

had  been  abridged  by  the  excision  of  Greece  from  Turkish 
territory.  In  1860  it  meant  that  the  Danubian  principali- 
ties, now  forming  the  kingdom  of  Roumania,  had  obtained 
an  emancipation  virtually,  as  it  is  now  formally,  complete. 
In  1878  it  meant  that  Bosnia,  with  Herzegovina,  had  bid 
farewell  to  all  active  concern  with  Turkey;  that  Servia  was 
enlarged,  and  that  northern  Bulgaria  was  free.  In  1880  it 
meant  that  Montenegro  had  crowned  its  glorious  battle  of 
400  years  by  achieving  acknowledgment  of  its  independence 
and  obtaining  great  accession  of  territory,  and  that  Thes- 
saly  was  added  to  free  Greece.  In  1886  it  meant  that 
southern  Bulgaria  had  been  permitted  to  associate  itself 
with  its  northern  sisters. 

What  is  the  upshot  of  all  this?  That  18,000,000  of 
human  beings  who  a  century  ago,  peopling  a  large  part  of 
the  Turkish  empire,  were  subject  to  its  at  once  paralyzing 
and  degrading  yoke,  are  now  as  free  from  it  as  if  they  were 
inhabitants  of  these  islands,  and  that  Greece,  Roumania, 
Servia,  Montenegro,  and  Bulgaria  stand  before  us  as  five 
living  witnesses  that,  even  in  this  world,  reign  of  wrong  is 
not  eternal.  But  still  it  is  dinned  in  our  ears  from  the 
presses,  and  indeed  from  the  thrones,  of  a  continent  that  we 
must  not  allow  our  regard  for  justice,  humanity,  and  free- 
dom of  life  and  honor  to  bring  into  question  or  put  to  haz- 
ard the  "integrity  of  the  Ottoman  Empire."  The  great 
and  terrible  tragedy  of  Armenia  is,  however,  for  the  time, 
I  trust  for  the  time  only,  out  of  sight  if  not  out  of  mind. 
One  hundred  thousand  victims — such  is  the  number  at 
which  they  are  placed  by  Dr.  Lepsius,  one  of  the  latest 
inquirers  whose  works  are  before  the  world,  and  who  adds 
to  other  recommendations  that  of  being  a  German — have 
sated  for  a  time  even  a  fiendish  appetite.  We  wait  in  pain- 
ful uncertainty  until  hunger  shall  return,  and  in  the  mean- 
time even  a  milder  phase  of  Turkish  horrors  absorbs  the 
mind  and  rouses  the  alarms  of  Europe. 


THE    CHAMPION    OF    THE    GREEKS.  309 

Of  remaining  fractions  of  European  Turkey,  the  island 
of  Crete  has  long  been  one  of  the  least  patient  under  the 
yoke.  It  was  here,  I  think,  that  in  one  of  that  series  of 
rebellions  which  have  lately  been  placed  before  the  public 
eye  through  a  letter  by  M.  Gannadios,  either  200  or  300 
Cretans,  together  with  their  bishop,  driven  by  the  last 
extremities  of  war  to  inclose  themselves  in  a  tower,  chose  to 
meet  common  and  universal  death  by  causing  it  to  explode 
rather  than  to  encounter  horrors  by  which,  according  to 
Turkish  usage,  conquered  enemies  too  commonly  have  been 
treated.  Into  one  more  of  these  struggles  the  gallant 
islanders  have  now  entered.  We  have  perhaps  advanced  in 
this  discussion  beyond  the  stage  which  it  would  have  been 
necessary  to  enter  largely  upon — particulars  of  the  Cretan 
case  having  been  stated  with  great  force  in  the  letter 
addressed  by  M.  Gennadios  to  the  Times,  published  in  that 
newspaper  on  the  fifteenth  of  February,  and  still  remaining, 
so  far  as  I  know,  without  reply.  But  it  may  be  well  to  point 
out  that  the  hopelessness  of  the  Cretan  case  is  manifested  by 
a  long  series  of  rebellions,  in  which  the  islanders,  though 
single-handed,  engaged  themselves  against  the  whole  strength 
of  the  Ottoman  Empire  in  a  struggle  of  life  and  death  for 
deliverance. 

M.  Gannadios  enumerates  the  revolts  of  1831,  1841,  1858, 
1866-68,  1877-78,  1889,  and  finally  1896.  These  figures, 
carry  with  them  their  own  demonstrative  efficiency.  It  is 
not  in  human  nature,  except  under  circumstances  of  grind- 
ing and  destructive  oppression,  to  renew  a  struggle  so  un- 
equal. The  details  of  that  oppression  and  of  the  perfidy 
with  which  the  pretended  concessions  to  Cretans  were  neu- 
tralized and  undermined,  and  of  truly  a  Turkish  maneuver, 
by  which  a  Mohammedan  minority  was  sent  on  from  Con- 
stantinople to  carry  on  armed  resistance  to  measures  of  con- 
cession, must  be  sought  in  their  proper  place,  the  histories 
of  tht;  time. 


310  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

This  simple  aggregate  of  the  facts,  presented  in  outline, 
once  for  all  convicts  the  central  power  and  shows  that  it 
has  no  title  to  retain  its  sanguinary  and  ineffectual  domin- 
ion. It  is  needless  to  go  further.  We  are  really  dealing 
with  a  res  judicata,  for  though  not  of  their  own  free  will, 
the  six  powers  have  taken  into  their  own  hands  the  pacifi- 
cation of  the  island  and  the  determination  of  its  future. 
But  we  must  not  suppose  that  we  owe  this  intervention  to  a 
recrudescence  of  spirit  and  courage  in  counsels  that  had 
hitherto  resulted  in  a  concert  of  miserable  poltroonery. 

A  new  actor,  governed  by  a  new  temper,  has  appeared 
upon  the  stage ;  not  one  equipped  with  powerful  fleets,  large 
armies  and  boundless  treasuries,  supplied  by  uncounted 
millions,  but  a  petty  power,  hardly  counted  in  the  list  of 
European  states,  suddenly  takes  its  place  midway  in  the 
conflict  between  Turkey  and  its  Cretan  insurgents.  But  it 
is  a  power  representing  the  race  that  had  fought  the  battles 
of  Thermopylae  and  Salamis,  and  had  hurled  back  the  hordes 
of  Asia  from  European  shores.  In  the  heroic  age  of  Greece, 
as  Homer  tells  us,  there  was  a  champion  who  was  small  of 
stature  but  full  of  fight.  He  had  in  his  little  body  a  great 
soul,  and  he  seems  to  have  been  reproduced  in  the  recent 
and  marvelously  gallant  action  of  Greece. 

It  is  sad  to  reflect  that  we  have  also  before  us  the  re- 
verse of  the  picture  in  the  six  powers,  who  offer  to  the 
world  the  most  conspicuous  example  of  the  reverse,  and 
present  to  us  a  huge  body  animated,  or  rather  tenanted,  by 
a  feeble  heart.  We  have  then  before  us,  it  is  literally  true, 
a  David  facing  six  Goliaths. 

Nor  is  Greece  so  easily  disposed  of  as  might  have  been 
anticipated,  and  what  the  world  seems  to  understand  is  this 
that  there  is  life  in  the  Cretan  matter,  that  this  life  has 
been  infused  into  it  exclusively  by  Grecian  action  and  that 
if,  under  the  merciful  providence  of  God  and  by  paths 
which  it  is  hard  as  yet  to  trace,  the  island  is  to  find  her 


RIGHT  HON.  JOHN  BRIGHT,  M.  P. 


THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  GEEEKS.  311 

liberation,  that  inestimable  boom  will  be  owing,  not  to  any 
of  the  great  governments  of  Europe,  for  they  are  paralyzed 
by  dissensions,  nor  even  to  any  of  the  great  peoples  of 
Europe,  for  the  door  is  shut  in  their  faces  by  the  < '  concert 
of  Europe,"  but  to  the  small  and  physically  insignificant 
race  known  as  the  Greeks.  Whatever  good  shall  be  per- 
mitted to  emerge  from  the  existing  chaos  will  lie  to  their 
credit,  and  theirs  alone. 

Is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  Greece  should  have  endeav- 
ored to  give  aid  to  the  Cretans?  As  often  as  they  rise  in 
rebellion  and  their  efforts,  due  to  Turkish  blindness  and 
bad  faith,  are. encountered  by  lawless  cruelty,  they  fly  in 
crowds  to  Greece,  which  is  their  only  refuge,  and  that  poor 
country  has  to  stand,  and  stand  alone,  between  them  and 
starvation.  As  to  their  Turkish  masters,  it  is  not  to  be  ex- 
pected that  they  should  find  any  cause  for  uneasiness  in 
such  a  state  of  things,  for  ever  since  that  evil  day,  the 
darkest  perhaps  in  the  whole  known  history  of  humanity, 
when  their  star,  reeking  with  gore,  rose  above  the  horizon, 
has  it  not  been  their  policy  and  constant  aim  to  depopulate 
the  regions  which  they  ruled?  The  title  of  Turkey  de  jure 
is,  in  truth  given  up  on  all  hands.  In  the  meager  cata- 
logue of  things  which  the  six  united  powers  have  done,  there 
is  this,  at  least,  included,  that  they  have  taken  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  sultan  the  care  and  administration  of  the 
island. 

If  Turkey  has  the  proper  rights  of  a  governing  power, 
every  act  it  has  done  and  is  doing  and  its  presence  in 
Canea  itself,  is  a  gross  breach  of  international  law.  It  is 
the  violence,  cruelty  and  perfidy  of  Ottoman  rule,  which 
alone  gives  it  any  title  to  interfere.  The  intention  which 
has  been  announced  on  its  behalf,  an  announcement  in- 
credible but  true,  is  that  when  the  Greek  forces  should  have 
left  the  island,  the  Turkish  soldiery,  the  proved  butchers  of 
Armenia,  the  same  body  and  very  probably  the  same 


312  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

corps  and  persons,  were  to  remain,  as  guardians  of  -order  in 
the  island.  But  the  six  powers  have  no  more  right  than  I 
have,  either  to  confer  or  limit  this  commission  unless  the 
sultan,  by  his  misconduct,  has  forfeited  his  right  to  rule. 
Autonomy,  too,  being  announced  for  Crete,  and  not  fey  his 
authority  but  by  theirs,  Crete  being  thus  derelict  in  point 
of  lawful  sovereignty,  does  all  reversionary  care  for  it  falls 
to  the  six  powers  ?  Are  we  really  to  commence  our  twen- 
tieth century  under  the  shadow  of  a  belief  that  conventions 
set  up  by  the  policy  of  the  moment  are  everything,  and  that 
community  of  blood,  religion,  history,  sympathy  and  inter- 
est are  nothing  ? 

How  stands  the  case  of  Crete  in  relation  to  Greece  ?  Do 
what  you  will  by  the  might  of  brute  power,  ' '  a  man's  a 
man  for  a'  that,"  and  in  respect  of  everything  that  makes  a 
man  to  be  a  man,  every  Cretan  is  a  Greek.  Ottoman  rule 
in  Crete  is  a  thing  of  yesterday,  but  Crete  was  part  of 
Greece,  the  Cretan  people  of  the  Greek  people,  at  least 
3,000  years  ago;  nor  have  the  moral  and  human  ties  between 
them  ever  been  either  broken  or  relaxed;  and  in  the  long 
years  and  centuries  to  come,  when  this  bad  dream  of  Otto- 
man dominion  shall  have  passed  away  from  Europe,  that 
union  will  still  subsist  and  cannot  but  prevail  as  long  as  a 
human  heart  beats  in  a  human  bosom. 

In  the  midst  of  high  and  self-sacrificing  enthusiasm  the 
Greek  government  and  people  have  shown  their  good  sense 
in  pleading  that  the  sense  of  the  people  of  Crete,  not  the 
momentary  and  partial  sense,  but  that  which  is  deliberate 
and  general  shall  be  considered.  The  Greeks  have  placed 
themselves  upon  a  ground  of  indestructible  strength.  They 
are  quite  right  in  declining  to  stand  upon  an  abstract  objec- 
tion to  the  suzerainty  of  Turkey  if  it  so  pleases  the  powers. 
Why  should  not  Crete  be  autonomously  united  with  Greece 
and  yet  not  detached  in  theory  from  the  body  of  the  Otto- 
man empire  ?  Such  an  arrangement  would  not  be  without 


THE  CHAMPION  OF  THE  GREEKS.  313 

example.  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  are  administered  by 
Austria,  but  I  apprehend  that  they  have  never  been  for- 
mally severed  from  the  overlordship  of  the  sultan.  Cyprus 
is  similarly  administered  by  Great  Britain,  and  European 
history  is  full  of  cases  in  which  paramount  or  full  sover- 
eignty in  one  territory  has  been  united  with  secondary  or 
subordinate  lordship  in  another.  I  quote  the  case  of 
Cyprus  as  a  precedent,  and  I  apprehend  that  so  far  it  is 
good,  while  I  subjoin  the  satisfaction  I  should  feel,  were  it 
granted  me,  before  the  close  of  my  long  life,  to  see  the  popu- 
lation of  that  Hellenic  island  placed  by  friendly  arrangement 
in  organic  relations  with  their  brethren  of  the  kingdom  and 
of  Crete. 

But  in  thus  indicating  a  possible  solution  I  claim  for  it  no 
authority.  I  exclude  no  other  alternative  compatible  with 
the  principles  which  have  been  established  by  the  situation 
These  I  take  to  be  that,  by  the  testimony  alike  of  living 
authority  and  of  facts,  Turkish  rule  in  Crete  exists  only  as 
a  shadow  of  the  past  and  has  no  place  in  the  future  ;  and 
that  there  is  no  organ  upon  earth,  subject  to  independent 
provisions  on  behalf  of  the  minority,  so  competent  or  so  well 
entitled  to  define  a  prospective  position  for  the  people  as 
that  people  itself. 

Further,  it  remains  to  be  recognized  that,  at  the  present 
juncture,  Greece,  whom  some  seem  disposed  to  treat  as  a 
criminal  and  disturber,  has  by  her  bold  action  conferred  a 
great  service  upon  Europe.  She  has  made  it  impossible  to 
palter  with  this  question  as  we  paltered  with  the  blood-stained 
question  of  Armenia.  She  has  extricated  it  from  the 
meshes  of  diplomacy  and  placed  it  on  the  order  of  the  day 
for  definite  solution.  I  can  remember  no  case  in  which  so 
small  a  state  has  conferred  so  great  a  benefit. 

As  to  the  notion  that  Greece  is  to  be  coerced  and  punished, 
I  hardly  like  to  sully  the  page  on  which  I  write  by  the  men- 
tion of  an  alternative  so  detestable.  It  would  be  about  as 


314  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

rational  to  transport  the  Greek  nation,  who  are  in  this  as 
one  man,  to  Siberia,  by  what,  I  believe,  is  called  an  admin 
istrative  order.     If  anyone  has  such  a  scheme  of  policy  to 
propose  I  advise  his  proposing  it  anywhere  rather  than  in 
England. 

Let  it  be  borne  in  mind  that  in  this  unhappy  business  all 
along,  under  the  cover  of  the  "concert  of  Europe,"  power 
and  speech  have  been  the  monopoly  of  the  governments  and 
their  organs,  while  the  people  have  been  shut  out.  Give  us 
at  length  both  light  and  air.  The  nations  of  Europe  are  in 
very  various  stages  of  their  training,  but  I  do  not  believe 
there  is  a  European  people  whose  j  udgment,  could  it  be  had, 
would  ordain  or  tolerate  the  infliction  of  punishment  upon 
Greece  for  the  good  deed  she  has  recently  performed.  Cer- 
tainly it  would  not  be  the  French,  who  so  largely  contributed 
to  the  foundation  of  the  kingdom,  nor  the  Italians,  still  so 
mindful  of  what  they  and  their  fathers  have  undergone  ; 
and,  least  of  all,  I  will  say,  the  English,  to  whom  the  air  of 
freedom  is  the  very  breath  of  their  nostrils,  who  have 
already  shown  in  every  way  open  to  them  how  they  are 
minded,  and  who,  were  the  road  now  laid  open  to  them  by 
a  dissolution  of  parliament,  would  show  it  by  returning  a 
parliament  which  upon  that  question  would  speak  with 
unanimity. 

Waiving  any  further  trespass  on  your  time  by  a  repetition 
of  apologies,  I  remain,  my  dear  duke,  sincerely  yours, 

W.  E.  GLADSTONE, 

Chateau  Thorene,  Cannes,  March  13. 


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CHAPTER   XXVI. 

THE  GOLDEN  WEDDING  OF  MR.   AND  MRS.    GLADSTONE. 

While  the  stars  burn, 

And  the  moons  increase, 

And  the  great  ages  onward  roll. 

— H.  W.  Longfellow. 


My  love,  when  life  was  young,  i  knew 

But  little  what  you  were  to  be, 

A  light  more  bounteous  to  me. 
While  lengthening  shadows  grew. 
Have  I  been  silent.  Love  ?  or  cold  ? 

It  may  be  you  have  little  guessed 

All  the  strong  love,  half-unexpressed, — 
Stronger,  as  I  grew  old. 

— Hamilton  Aide, 


O  golden  hour  that  caps  the  time 
Since  heart  to  heart  like  rhyme  to  rhyme 
You  stood  and  listened  to  the  chime 
Of  inner  bells  by  spirits  rung. 

Oh,  parents  of  a  restless  race, 
You  miss  full  many  a  bonny  face 
That  would  have  smiled  a  filial  grace 
Around  your  Golden  Wedding  wine. 

But  God  is  good,  and  God  is  great, 
His  will  be  done,  if  soon  or  late 
Your  dead  stand  happy  in  yon  Gate 

And  call  you  Blessed  while  they  shine. 

So,  drop  the  tear,  and  dry  the  eyes, 
Your  rainbow  glitters  in  the  skies. 
Here's  golden  wine;  young,  old,  arise 

With  cups  as  full  as  our  souls,  we  say. 
315 


316  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"  Two  Hearts,  that  wrought  with  smiles  thro'  tears, 
This  rainbow  span  of  fifty  years, 
Behold  how  true,  true  love  appears 

True  gold  for  your  Golden  Wedding  day  ! " 

— Sidney  Lanier. 

On  the  25th  of  July,  1889,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gladstone  cele- 
brated their  Golden  Wedding  in  the  quietude  of  their  moun- 
tain home.  On  that  day  Hawarden  Castle  was  invaded 
with  kindliest  greetings.  From  every  continent  of  earth 
and  from  ships  that  were  far  out  at  sea  came  loving  con- 
gratulations. Kings  and  princes  and  peers,  the  sons  and 
daughters  of  toil,  ' '  old  men  and  maidens,  young  men  and 
children," — all  the  world  was  one  that  July  day  in  its 
benedictions  and  its  prayers.  The  venerable  peasants  of 
Hawarden,  with  their  wives,  men  and  women  from  the  cot- 
tages and  the  fields,  and  little  children  in  the  rosy  dawn  of 
life,  came  in  goodly  companies  to  pay  their  reverential 
respect  to  Mr.  Gladstone  and  his  gracious  wife,  who 
through  fifty  beautiful  years,  had  taught,  by  their  devoted 
lives,  the  grand  lesson,  that — 

'Tis  only  noble  to  be  good; 
Kind  hearts  are  more  than  coronets, 
And  simple  faith  than  Norman  blood. 

England  was  proud  of  Mr.  Gladstone  for  his  greatness, 
and  honored  Mrs.  Gladstone  for  her  grace;  but  these  sim- 
ple country-folk  loved  them  for  their  goodness  —  so  deep, 
so  gentle  and  so  true.  All  day  long  the  bells  of  Hawarden 
rang  out  their  merry  chimes,  and  the  hearts  of  the  Hawar- 
den people  kept  time  to  the  music  of  the  bells.  But  per- 
haps the  most  elaborate  and  beautiful  of  all  the  tributes 
that  reached  Hawarden  that  day,  was  a  Golden  Wedding 
album  sent  by  the  National  Liberal  Club.  This  album  rep- 
resents the  best  efforts  of  the  artistic  genius  of  England, 
and  speaks  the  enthusiastic  homage  of  uncounted  thousands. 
We  have  great  pleasure  in  presenting  our  readers  with  a 
fac-simile  of  this  beautiful  tribute. 


THE    GOLDEN    WEDDING.  317 


ONWARD    AND    HEAVENWARD. 

Would  you  be  young  again  ? 

So  would  not  I  ; 
One  tear  to  mem'ry  given 

Onward  I  d  hie 
Life's  dark  flood  forded  o'er, 
All  but  at  rest  on  shore, — 
Say,  would  you  plunge  once  more 

With  home  so  nigh  ? 

If  you  might,  would  you  now 

Retrace  your  way  ? 
Wander  through  stormy  wilds, 

Faint  and  astray  ? 
Night's  gloomy  watches  spread,    . 
Morning  all  beaming  red,  t 

Hope's  smiles  around  us  shed, 

Heavenward — away  ! 

Where,  then,  are  those  dear  ones, 

Our  joy  and  delight 
Dear  and  more  dear,  though  now 

Hidden  from  sight, 
Where  they  rejoice  to  be, 
There  is  the  land  for  me  ; 
Fly  time— fly  speedily  ! 

Come,  life  and  light  I 

— Lady  Nairn. 


CHAPTER   XXVII. 

GLADSTONE    ON    AMERICA "  OUK    KIN    BEYOND    THE  SEA. " 

The  statesmen  of  the  American  Revolution  have  taken  their 
place  once  for  all  among  the  greatest  political  instructors  of  the 
world.  George  Washington  was  their  acknowledged  and  illustrious 
head,  and  to  him  and  them  I  have  long  felt  that  I  owed  no  trivial 
part  of  my  public  education. — W.  E.  Gladstone. 

For  Peace,  and  all  that  follows  in  her  path — 
Nor  slighting  honor  and  his  country's  fame, 
He  stood  unmoved  and,  dared  to  face  the  blame 
Of  party  spirit  and  its  turbid  wrath. 
Calmly  he  pursued 

A  course  at  which  the  feebler  spirits  sneered, 
The  bolder  fumed  with  clamor  loud  and  rude ; 
And  while  the  world  still  doubted,  hoped  and  feared, 
This  chief  a  bloodless  victory  hath  won — 
Brittannia's  wisest,  best  and  bravest  son. 

Christopher  P.  Cranch. 

America  had  no  truer,  no  more  appreciative  friend  than 
Mr.  Gladstone.  A  diligent  student  of  our  history  from  the 
days  of  Washington  until  now,  he  has  been  quick  to  dis- 
cern and  generous  to  acknowledge  all  the  elements  of  worth 
in  the  Republic  which  he  has  often  poetically  described  as 
"England's  fair  daughter  beyond  the  sea."  If  he  were  liv- 
ing" still,  he  would  doubtless  throw  the  weight  of  his  genius, 
and  the  greater  weight  of  his  moral  influence  on  behalf  of 
the  Anglo-American  Alliance,  that  bids  fair  to  unite  in  in- 
separable bonds  the  lands  of  Shakspeare  and  Milton,  of 
George  Washington  and  Abraham  Lincoln.  In  the  year 
1889,  Mr.  Gladstone  was  cordially  and  enthusiastically  in- 
vited to  attend  the  Centennial  Celebration  of  Washington's 


Inauguration. 


318 


GLADSTONE  ON  AMERICA:    OUR  KIN  BEYOND  THE  SEA.    319 

Mr.  McBride  sent  Mr.  Gladstone  a  list  of  names  signed  to 
a  Home  Rule  memorial,  which  included  those  of  President 
Harrison,  Cardinal  Gibbons,  Speaker  Carlisle,  Vice-Presi- 
dent  Morton,  Archbishop  Ryan,  Secretary  Elaine  and  a 
large  majority  of  the  members  of  both  branches  of  Con- 
gress. Mr.  McBride  received  an  autograph  letter  from  Mr. 
Gladstone,  reading  as  follows: 

HOUSE  OF  COMMONS,  LONDON,  APRIL,  12,  1879. 

MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  the  honor  to  acknowledge  your  letter  of  the 
22d  March,  and  the  remarkable  list  appended  to  it  of  those  dis- 
tinguished citizens  of  the  United  States,  who  have  testified  through 
the  memorial  you  mention,  their  interest  in  the  condition  of  Ireland 
and  their  desire  for  a  just  and  reasonable  acknowledgment  of  her 
national  claims  and  aspirations. 

I  rejoice  not  only  to  think,  but  to  know,  that  throughout  the  wide 
confines  of  the  race  to  which  we  all  belong,  there  is  an  overwhelming 
preponderance  of  sentiment  in  favor  of  that  acknowledgement.  At 
home  this  judgment  has  been  constitutionally  recorded  by  Ireland 
herself,  by  Scotland  and  Wales,  the  representatives  of  all  the  three 
being-  in  favor  of  Home  Rule,  by  a  majority  of  three  or  four  to  one; 
and  founding  ourselves  on  the  evidence  of  the  elections  in  England 
which  have  taken  place  since  the  general  election  of  1866,  we  firmly 
believe  that  England  herself,  were  the  opportunity  now  afforded  her 
by  a  dissolution,  would  record  a  verdict  decisively  in  accord  with 
those  of  the  other  portions  of  the  United  Kingdom  and  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  at  large.  Encouraged  by  these  indications  at  home  and 
abroad,  and  by  the  wise  advice  of  their  representatives  in  Parliament, 
the  Irish  people  show  an  indisposition  to  crime  and  outrage  not  less 
remarkable  than  their  determination  to  carry  forward  their  cause  to 
its  successful  consummation,  now  retarded  by  the  cast  of  votes  of 
men  who  do  not  represent  the  real  sentiment  of  the  country.  It  is  a 
further  satisfaction  to  me  to  include  in  this  acknowledgment,  local 
but  authoritative,  manifestations  from  America,  only  less  remarkable 
than  what  has  proceeded  from  the  centers,  and  has  had  the  illustri- 
ous sanction  of  the  President  himself.  This  very  day  I  have  Deceived 
a  commuication  in  the  same  spirit  with  your  own,  from  the  Legisla- 
ture of  Nebraska — one  further  indication  of  the  sentiment  and  desire 
which  prevails  throughout  the  vast  domain  of  the  United  States. 

Finally  I  rejoice  to  be  put  in  possession  of  such  declarations  at  a 
moment  when  your  great  country  is  about  to  celebrate,  on  the  30th 
inst.,  the  centennial  anniversary  of  the  inauguration  of  Washington 
as  the  first  President  of  the  American  commonwealth.  I  have  been 
requested  from  Chicago  and  elsewhere,  to  intimate  an  assurance  of  my 


320  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

participation  in  your  national  joy.  It  is  a  real  and  grateful  partici- 
pation ;  for  the  statesmen  of  the  American  Revolution  have  taken 
their  place  once  for  all  among  the  greatest  political  instructors  of 
the  world.  George  Washington  was  their  acknowledged  and  illustri- 
ous head,,and  to  him  and  them  I  have  long  felt  that  I  owed  no  trivial 
part  of  my  own  public  education.  Long,  without  limit  of  length, 
may  that  union  flourish  under  the  blessing  and  favor  of  God,  with  the 
foundation  of  which  their  names  are  inseparably  associated. 

I  have  the  honor  to  remain,  my  dear  sir,  your  most  obedient  and 
faithful,  W.  E.  GLADSTONE. 

J.  J.  MCBRIDE,  Esq. 

Many  efforts  were  made  to  persuade  Mr.  Gladstone  to 
visit  America  during  the  World's  Fair,  but  all  in  vain. 
The  stormy  tides  of  the  Atlantic,  that  had  no  terrors  for  the 
Pilgrim  Fathers  in  1620,  seems  to  terrify  the  souls  of  their 
posterity.  In  Mr.  Gladstone's  "  Gleanings  of  Past  Years" 
he  devotes  considerable  space  to  * '  Our  Kin  Beyond  the 
Sea."  The  whole  essay  is  worthy  of  a  most  careful  study 
by  all  Americans.  We  set  in  order  here  a  series  of  the 
most  interesting  excerpts  : 

"Higher  and  deeper  than  the  concern  of  the  Old  World 
at  large  in  the  thirteen  colonies,  now  grown  into  thirty- 
eight  States,  besides  eight  Territories,  is  the  special  inter- 
est of  England  in  their  condition  and  prospects. 

"It  is  America  alone  who,  at  a  coming  time,  can  and 
probably  will  wrest  from  England  her  commercial  pre-em- 
inence. She  will  probably  become  what  we  are  now,  the 
head  servant  in  the  great  household  of  the  world,  the  em- 
ployer of  all  employed,  because  her  service  will  be  the  most 
and  ablest. 

"The  students  of  the  future,  in  the  tranquil  domain  of 
political  philosophy,  will  have  much  to  say  in  the  way  of 
comparison  between  American  and  British  institutions. 

'  'There  is  no  parallel  in  all  the  records  of  the  world  to 
the  case  of  that  prolific  British  mother,  who  has  sent  forth 
her  innumerable  children  over  all  the  earth,  to  be  the  found- 
ers of  half  a  dozen  empires. 


GLADSTONE  ON  AMERICA!  OUR  KIN  BEYOND  THE  SEA.    321 

"Among  these  children  there  is  one  whose  place  in  the 
world's  eye  and  in  history  is  superlative;  it  is  the  Ameri- 
can republic.  jShe  is  the  eldest  born.  She  has,  taking  the 
capacity  of  her  land  into  view,  as  well  as  its  mere  measure- 
ment, a  natural  base  for  the  greatest  continuous  empire 
ever  established  by  man.  The  development  which  the  re- 
public has  effected  has  been  unexampled  for  its  rapidity  and 
force.  While  other  countries  have  doubled  or  at  most 
trebled  their  population,  she  has  risen,  during  one  century 
of  freedom,  in  round  numbers  from  two  millions  to  forty- 
five  (1878).  As  to  riches,  it  is  reasonable  to  establish  from 
the  decennial  stages  of  the  progress  thus  far  achieved,  a  ser- 
ies for  the  future;  and,  reckoning  upon  this  basis,  I  sup- 
pose that  the  very  next  census,  in  the  year  1880,  will  ex- 
hibit her  to  the  world  as  certainly  the  wealthiest  of  all  the 
nations.  The  huge  figure  of  a  thousand  millions  sterling, 
which  may  be  taken  roundly  as  the  annual  income  of  the 
United  Kingdom,  has  been  reached  at  a  surprising  rate — a 
rate  which  may  perhaps  be  best  expressed  by  saying  that, 
if  we  could  have  started  forty  or  fifty  years  ago  from  zero, 
at  the  rate  of  our  annual  increment,  we  should  now  have 
reached  our  present  position.  But  while  we  have  been  ad- 
vancing with  this  portentous  rapidity,  America  is  passing 
us  by  as  if  in  a  canter.  Yet  even  now,  the  work  of  search- 
ing the  soil  and  the  bowels  of  the  territory,  and  opening 
out  her  enterprise  throughout  its  vast  expanse,  is  in  its 
infancy.  The  England  and  the  America  of  the  present  are 
probably  the  two  strongest  nations  of  the  world. 

' '  In  many  and  the  most  fundamental  respects  the  two 
still  carry  in  undiminished,  perhaps  in  increasing  clearness, 
the  notes  of  resemblance  that  beseem  a  parent  and  a  child. 

"Both  wish  for  self-government,  and,  however  grave  the 
drawbacks  under  which  in  one  or  both  it  exists,  the  two 
have  among  the  great  nations  of  the  world,  made  the  most 
effectual  advances  toward  the  true  aim  of  rational  politics. 


322  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"They  are  similarly  associated  in  their  fixed  idea  that 
the  force  in  which  all  government  takes  effect,  is  to  be  con- 
stantly basked  and,  as  it  were,  illuminated  by  thought  in 
speech  and  writing.  They  are  governments  not  of  force 
only  but  of  persuasion. 

"Many  more  are  the  concords,  and  not  less  vital  than 
these,  of  the  two  nations,  as  expressed  in  their  institutions. 
They  alike  prefer  the  practical  to  the  abstract.  They  tol- 
erate opinion,  with  only  a  reserve  on  behalf  of  decency,  and 
they  desire  to  confine  coercion  to  the  province  of  action, 
and  to  leave  thought,  as  such,  entirely  free.  They  set  a 
high  value  on  liberty  for  its  own  sake.  They  desire  to  give 
full  scope  to  the  principles  of  self-reliance  in  the  people, 
and  they  deem  self-help  to  be  immeasurably  superior  to 
help  in  any  other  form. 

"They  mistrust  and  mislike  the  centralization  of  power. 

"They  regard  publicity  as  the  vital  air  of  politics. 

"  There  were,  however,  the  strongest  reasons  why  Amer- 
ica could  not  grow  into  a  reflection  or  repetition  of  England. 

' l  In  England  inequality  lies  imbedded  in  the  very  base 
of  the  social  structure;  in  America  it  is  a  late,  incidental, 
unrecognized  product,  not  of  tradition  but  of  industry  and 
wealth,  as  they  advance  with  various  and  of  necessity  un- 
equal steps.  Heredity,  seated  as  an  idea  in  the  heart's  core 
of  Englishmen,  and  sustaining  far  more  than  it  is  sustained 
by  those  of  our  institutions  which  express  it,  was  as  truly 
absent  from  the  intellectual  and  moral  store  with  which  the 
colonists  traversed  the  Atlantic,  as  if  it  had  been  some  for- 
gotten article  in  the  bills  of  lading  that  made  up  their  car- 
goes. Equality  combined  with  liberty,  and  renewable  at 
each  descent  from  one  generation  to  another,  was  the 
groundwork  of  their  social  creed. 

"The  infancy  of  the  States  had  been  upon  the  whole 
what  their  manhood  was  to  be,  self-governed  and  republi- 
can. Their  revolution,  as  we  call  it,  was  like  ours  (1688) 


GLADSTONE  ON  AMERICA:    OUR  KIN  BEYOND  THE  SEA.   323 

in  the  main,  a  vindication  of  liberties  inherited  and  pos- 
sessed— a  conservative  revolution. 

'  'The  two  constitutions  of  the  two  countries  express,  in- 
deed, rather  the  differences  than  the  resemblances  of  the 
nations.  The  one  is  a  thing  grown,  the  other  a  thing  made; 
the  one  a  praxis,  the  other  a  poiesis;  the  one  the  offspring 
of  tendency  and  indeterminate  time,  the  other  of  choice  and 
of  an  epoch.  But  as  the  British  constitution  is  the  most 
subtle  organism  which  has  proceeded  from  the  womb  and 
the  long  gestation  of  progressive  history,  so  the  American 
constitution  is,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  the  most  wonderful  work 
ever  struck  off  at  a  given  time  by  the  brain  and  purpose  of 
man." 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

GLADSTONE    AND    HIS   FRIENDS. 

I  count  myself  in  nothing  else  so  happy, 
As  in  a  soul  remembering  my  good  friends. 

— Shakespeare. 

There  is  no  blessedness  like  a  provident  friend — neither  riches  nor 
the  power  of  monarchs.  Popular  applause  is  of  little  value  in  ex- 
change for  a  generous  friend.  — Euripides. 

The  mill-round  of  our  fate  appears, 

A  sun-path  in  thy  worth. 
Me  too,  thy  nobleness  has  taught, 

To  master  my  despair; 
The  fountains  of  my  hidden  life, 
Are  through  thy  friendship  fair. — R.  W.  Emerson. 

He  is  away  from  all  the  praise 

And  honors  that  surround  his  name. 

No  need  has  he  of  further  fame, 
Nor  monuments  which  men  can  raise, 

For  he  walks  on  in  peaceful  ways 
With  only  One  to  praise  or  blame. 

An  uncrowned  King!     God  crowns  him  now, 

With  that  fair  coronal  of  peace 
Which  victors  wear  when  conflicts  cease; 

With  which  God  does  great  souls  endow, 
Which  fits  alone  the  faithful  brow 

Whose  glory  He  shall  still  increase, 

Has  he  yet  met  his  friends  again, 

Bright,  Stanley,  Browning,  Tennyson — 
All  who  have  kept  the  faith,  and  now 
The  hero's  guerdon,  free  from  stain? 
•  Yet  would  the  best  for  him  remain 

Till  Christ  had  said  to  him,  'Well  done.' 

— Marianna  Furningham. 

To  tell  the  number  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  friends  would  in- 
volve the  complication  of  a  very  extensive  catalogue.  Six 
of  the  most  distinguished  ecclesiastics  of  the  century  were 
his  warm  and  ardent  friends.  Wilberf orce  Bishop  Oxford, 

324 


GLADSTONE'S  FKIENDS.  325 

the  Chrysostom  of  the  modern  Church,  Dr.  Pusey,  Dr. 
John  Keble,  who  has  laid  the  world  through  all  the  coming 
years  under  a  debt  of  gratitude  by  his  priceless  little  book 
"The  Christian  Year,"  Cardinal  Manning  and  Cardinal- 
Newman,  friends  of  the  old  Oxford  days; and  Dean  Stanley, 
as  gentle  a  spirit  as  ever  trod  the  ways  of  men.  In  all  the 
walks  of  men ;  among  men  of  science,  of  liberation,  of  art, 
as  well  as  the  busy  world  of  politics,  Mr.  Gladstone's  friends 
were  an  uncounted  multitude.  And  besides  these  distinct 
personal  friendships,  he  had  made  a  place  for  himself  in  the 
hearts  of  tens  of  thousands  of  his  fellow-countrymen. 
Great  men  are  admired, — sometimes  idolized  ;  Mr.  Glad- 
stone was  loved. 

In  the  earlier  pages  of  this  book  considerable  space  is 
given  in  reference  to  the  tender  and  gracious  friendship 
that  existed  between  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Arthur  Hallam  in 
their  young  days,  a  friendship  as  sacred  and  beautiful  as  it 
proved  to  be  pathetic  in  its  brevity  and  the  tragic  charac- 
ter of  its  close.  All  the  world  had  wept  with  Tennyson 
who  "  In  Memoriam  "  laid  bare  his  broken  heart  and  sung 
the  requiem  of  an  ideal  friendship: 

Forgive  my  grief  for  one  removed — 

Thy  creature  whom  I  found  so  fair; 

I  trust  he  lives  in  Thee,  and  there 
I  find  him  worthier  to  be  loved. 
Forgive  these  wild  and  wandering  cries — 

Confusions  of  a  wasted  youth;' 

Forgive  them  where  they  fail  in  truth, 
And  in  thy  wisdom  make  me  wise. 

*  *  *  * 

The  man,  that  with  me  trod 

This  planet,  was  a  noble  type, 

Appearing  ere  the  times  were  ripe — 
That  friend  of  mine  who  lives  in  God. 
That  God,  which  ever  lives  and  moves, 

One  God,  one  law,  one  element, 

And  one  far-off  divine  event 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves. 


326  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

So  David  mourned  for  Jonathan,  and  though  in  less 
poetic  form,  Mr.  Gladstone  wrote  concerning  his  friend  of 
life's  young  morning,  written  when  the  snows  of  winter  had 
whitened  his  hair,  lines  worthy  to  stand  side  by  side  with  the 
words  of  the  sorrowing  poet. 

Mr.  Gladstone  says:  "  Arthur  Hallam  undoubtedly  en- 
joyed very  great  advantages.  The  fame  of  his  father  as  an 
historian  still  endures,  and  it  is  propably  not  too  much  to 
say  of  him  as  an  author  that  he  belongs  to  the  permanent 
staff  of  British  literature.  His  mother,  too,  was  well  suited 
by  her  remarkable  gifts,  however  their  display  might  be 
repressed  by  feminine  modesty,  to  be  the  mother  of  so  dis- 
tinguished a  son.  He  was  that  rare  and  blessed  creature, 
anima  naturalitis  Christiana.  All  this  time  his  faculties 
were  in  course  of  rapid,  yet  not  too  rapid,  development. 
He  read  largely,  and  though  not  superficially,  yet  with  an 
extraordinary  speed.  He  had  no  high,  ungenial  or  exclu- 
sive ways,  but  heartily  acknowledged  and  habitually  con- 
formed to  the  republican  equality,  long  and  happily  estab- 
lished in  the  life  of  our  English  public  schools. 

"As  a  learner,  he  bears  in  regard  to  the  most  tangible 
tests  of  excellence,  the  severest  scrutiny.  This  may  be 
seen  by  his  translating,  at  fourteen,  the  Ugolino  of  Dante 
into  Greek  iambics;  and  again  at  a  later  time,  but  when  he 
was  not  yet  eighteen,  by  his  production  of  Italian  sonnets, 
which  Sir  Anthony  Panizzi,  a  consummate  judge,  declared 
that  he  could  not  distinguish,  so  finished  were  the  compos- 
itions, from  the  productions  of  native  authors.  The  sys- 
tem of  his  day  at  Eton,  did  not  apply  those  stimulants  to 
emulation,  which  are  now  perhaps,  in  testimony  of  our 
degeneracy  and  decline  from  the  standard  of  disinterested 
love,  necessarily  and  universally  employed  in  England. 
But  any  competent  witness  would  at  once  have  declared  him 
the  best  scholar  (in  any  but  the  very  narrowest  sense)  of 
the  whole  school  with  its  five  hundred  pupils.  I  have 


CARDINAL  NEWMAN. 


CARDINAL   MANNING. 


GLADSTONE'S  FRIENDS.  327 

glanced  at  the  causes  which  confined  his  exertions  of  Cam- 
bridge, to  the  production  of  such  poetry  and  prose  as  was 
not  available  for  the  high  honors  of  the  university.  But 
in  this  world  there  is  one  unfailing  test  of  the  highest 
excellence.  It  is  that  the  man  should  be  felt  to  be  greater 
than  his  works.  And  in  the  case  of  Arthur  Hallam,  all 
that  knew  him  knew  that  the  work  was  transcended  by  the 
man. " 

On  the  19th  of  July,  1873,  there  passed  away,  with  terri- 
ble suddeness,  Mr.  Gladstone's  life-  long  friend,  the  much-be- 
loved Samuel  Wilberf  orce,  Bishop  of  Winchester.  He  was 
riding  to  Holmbury  with  Earl  Granville,  when  he  was 
thrown  from  his  horse  and  killed  instantly,  "ft  ever  shall 
I  forget  the  expression  of  sorrow  on  the  face  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone when  I  arrived  at  Holmbury  after  this  fearful  ride," 
wrote  Lord  Granville.  Mr.  Gladstone  paid  a  magnificent 
tribute  to  the  memory  'of  his  old  friend. 

"  If  I  wished  to  know  the  true  character  of  Bishop  Wil- 
berf orce,"  he  said,  "I  would  not  ask  it  from  those  who 
have  admired  his  power  as  displayed  in  Parliament,  or  who 
felt  his  charm  in  society.  I  would  go  to  other  classes  of  the 
community,  and  know  from  them  what  was  the  true  and 
deep  nature  of  the  man.  To  one  class  above  all  others, 
were  I  able,  I  would  make  my  appeal.  I  would  make  it  to 
those  who,  from  time  to  time,  have  been  called  upon  to 
suffer  under  the  calamities  of  life  ;  and  I  affirm,  from  a 
a  wide  personal  knowledge,  that  which  others  too,  I  have  no 
doubt,  can  affirm — that  wherever  there  was  affliction  in  the 
world,  thither  the  heart  of  Bishop  Wilberf  orce  was  drawn 
with  resistless  power  ;  there,  if  he  had  a  friendship,  he  re- 
paired for  its  exercise  ;  there,  if  he  had  no  friendship  already 
existing,  he  endeavoured  to  found  one.  I  would  appeal  to 
another  class,  were  it  in  our  power  to  take  their  evidence — 
I  would  appeal  to  the  children  of  this  land.  I  would  ask 
them  what  they  thought  of  Bishop  Wilberf  orce  ;  of  one 


328  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

whom  they  knew  through  the  Press  by  some  of  the  most 
charming  productions  ever  written  for  the  young,  but  who, 
when  they  have  seen  him  in  the  house  of  their  parents,  will 
recollect  how  that  extraordinary  man,  for  whom  nothing 
was  too  great  and  nothing  apparently  too  small,  had  for 
every  one  of  them  marks  of  his  attention  and  his  love,  that 
left  on  the  hearts  of  them  all,  a  record  which  they  will 
retain  through  life.  ...  I  say  that  he  was  the  Bishop,  not 
of  a  particular  Church,  not  of  a  particular  diocese,  but  of 
the  nation  to  which  he  belonged.  I  say  that  his  heart  beat 
high  and  strong  to  everything  which  could  stir  the  feelings 
or  command  the  understanding  of  an  Englishman.  I  say 
that  his  action  went  far  and  wide  among  us  in  a  degree  that 
never  has  been  known  before." 

Among  his  warmest  political  friends,  Mr.  Gladstone 
counted  the  doughty  fearless  Quaker,  John  Bright.  Through 
many  years  they  toiled  together,  and  all  in  good  time  Mr. 
Gladstone,  to  the  astonishment  of  the  political  world,  in- 
vited Mr.  Bright  to  join  his  Cabinet,  and  the  Honorable 
Member  for  Birmingham  became  President  of  the  Board  of 
Trade.  On  the  Irish  question,  Mr.  Bright  differed  from 
his  distinguished  friend,  and  the  Liberals  and  in  obedience 
to  his  strong  convictions,  he  severed  his  connection  with  the 
party  and  joined  the  Unionists.  But  he  did  not  cease  to 
hold  firm  and  true  by  the  personal  friendship  of  other 
years. 

On  the  16th  of  June  1877,  Mr.  Bright  wrote  a  few  sim- 
ple but  impressive  words  to  Mr.  Gladstone  concerning  the 
course  he  had  taken.  It  was  the  case  of  a  man  of  con- 
science writing  to  a  man  of  conscience,  and  they  two  would 
perfectly  understand  these  words,  whoever  else  might  mis- 
understand. The  question  involved,  and  the  course  taken 
by  Mr.  Bright,  were  matters  of  conscience,  and  there  were 
not  too  men  living  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  more  loyal  to 
conscience  than  William  Ewart  Gladstone  and  John  Bright. 


GLADSTONE'S  FRIENDS.  329 

"I  grieve,"  said  Mr.  Bright  that  I  cannot  act  with  you 
as  in  years  past,  but  my  judgment  and  my  conscience  forbid 
it.  If  I  have  said  a  word  that  seems  harsh  or  unfriendly, 
I  will  ask  you  to  forgive  it. " 

Nothing  could  be  nobler  than  this,  unless  it  be  the  grand 
magnanimity  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  as  manifest  in  that  impres- 
sive eulogy  he  pronounced  upon  his  dead  friend  and  com- 
patriot in  the  British  House  of  Commons,  a  few  days 
after  that  gentle  spirit  had  passed  from  the  scenes  of  earth 
to  the  rest  and  peace  of  the  silent  land.  We  quote  part  of 
that  tribute  as  worthy  alike  of  the  living  speaker  and  the 
silent  friend. 

Mr.  Gladstone  said:  "  I  can  not  help  saying  at  the  outset 
of  the  few  remarks  I  may  be  allowed  to  make,  I  think  that 
Mr.  Bright  has  been,  in  a  very  remarkable  degree,  happy 
in  the  season  of  his  removal  from  amongst  us.  Felix  op- 
portunitate  mortis.  He  has  lived  to  witness  the  triumph  of 
almost  every  great  cause,  perhaps  I  might  say  of  every 
great  cause  to  which  he  has  specially  devoted  his  heart  and 
mind.  He  has  lived  to  establish  a  special  claim  to  the  ad- 
miration of  those  from  Avhom  he  had  differed  through  a  long 
political  life,  by  his  marked  concurrence  with  them  upon  the 
prominent  and  dominant  question  of  the  hour.  But,  while 
he  has  in  that  way  additionally  opened  the  minds  and  hearts 
of  those  from  whom  he  had  differed,  to  an  appreciation  of 
his  worth  and  merits,  I  hope,  and  I  think  that  I  may  say 
that  he  lost  nothing  by  that  want  of  concord  with  us  in  a 
particular  subject  which  we  so  much  lamented.  He  lost 
nothing  in  any  portion  of  the  party  with  which  he  had  been 
so  long  associated  of  the  admiration,  of  the  gratitude  to 
which  they  all  felt  him  to  be  so  well  entitled. 

I  am  not  aware  that  on  any  occasion  from  the  lips  of  any 
single  individual,  since  Mr.  Bright  came  to  be  separated 
from  the  great  bulk  of  the  Liberal  party  on  the  Irish  ques- 
tion, there  has  proceeded  a  word — I  do  not  say  a  question  as 


330  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

to  his  motives,  for  that  would  have  been  ridiculous  in  the 
highest  degree — but  a  single  word  of  disparagement  as  to 
the  course  he  took.  For  my  own  part  I  may  perhaps  make 
this  acknowledgment,  that  I  have  not  through  my  whole 
political  life,  fully  embraced  what  I  take  to  be  the  character 
of  Mr.  Bright,  and  the  value  of  that  character  to  the  coun- 
try. I  mention  this  because  it  was  at  a  particular  epoch  of 
the  Crimean  war,  when  I  came  more  fully  to  understand 
what  I  had  not  done  before,  the  position  which  was  held  by 
him  and  by  his  friends — I  must  go  a  step  further,  and  say 
his  illustrious  friend  Mr.  Cobden.  These  men  had  lived 
upon  the  confidence,  the  approval,  the  applause  of  the 
people,  and  the  work  of  their  lives  had  been  to  propel  the 
tide  of  public  sentiment.  Suddenly  they  come  upon  a  great 
occasion  on  which  they  differed  from  the  vast  majority  of 
their  countrymen.  I  myself,  was  one  of  those  who  did  not 
agree  with  them  in  the  particular  view  which  they  took  of 
the  Crimean  war,  but  I  feel  profoundly,  and  I  have  never 
ceased  to  think,  what  must  be  the  moral  elevation  of  men 
who,  having  been  nurtured  through  their  lives  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  popular  approval  and  enthusiasm,  could  at  a  mo- 
ment's notice  consent  to  part  with  the  whole  of  the  favor 
which  they  hitherto  enjoyed,  and  which  their  opponents 
might  have  dreamed  was  to  them  as  the  very  breath  of 
their  nostrils.  They  accepted  undoubted  unpopularity,  for 
that  war  commanded,  if  not  the  unanimous,  at  any  rate  the 
enormous  approval  of  the  people. 

At  that  time  it  was  that  although  we  had  known  much  of 
Mr.  Bright,  we  learned  something  more.  We  had  known 
his  great  mental  gifts  and  powers;  we  had  known  his  cour- 
age and  his  consistency;  we  had  known  his  splendid  elo- 
quence which  then  was  or  afterwards  came  to  be  acknow- 
ledged as  the  loftiest  that  had  sounded  within  these  walls 
through  generations.  But  we  had  not  till  then  known  how 
hign  the  moral  tone  of  these  popular  leaders  had  been 


GLADSTONE'S  FRIENDS.  331 

elevated,  and  of  the  splendid  examples  they  could  set  to  the 
whole  of  their  contemporaries  and  to  coming  generations,  of 
a  readiness  to  part  with  all  the  sympathies  and  with  all  the 
support  they  had  held  so  dear,  for  the  sake  of  right  and  con- 
scientious conviction. 

"I  will  not  dwell  upon  the  gifts  of  Mr.  Bright,  which  are 
as  well  known  to  members  of  the  House  as  to  myself,  ex- 
cept on  one.  It  may  be  thought  a  minor  particular,  but  I 
cannot  help  allowing  myself  the  gratification  of  recording 
it.  Mr.  Bright  was,  and  he  knew  himself  to  be,  and  he 
delighted  in  being  one,  of  the  chief  supporters  amongst  us 
of  the  purity  of  the  English  tongue.  He  knew  how  the 
character  of  action  is  associated  with  our  language,  and  as 
he  was  in  everything  an  Englishman,  profoundly  attached  to 
the  country  in  which  he  was  born,  so  the  tongue  of  his. 
people  was  to  him  almost  an  object  of  worship,  and  in  the- 
long  course  of  speeches  it  would  be  difficult,  hardly  possible, 
to  find  a  single  case  in  which  that  noble  language — the- 
language  of  Shakspeare  and  Milton — did  not  receive 
worthy  illustration. 

"  There  is  another  circumstance  better  known  to  me  than 
perhaps,  to  any  other  person,  and  which  I  must  give  my- 
self the  pleasure  of  alluding  to.  Everyone  is  aware  of 
Mr.  Bright's  absolute  contempt  for  office.  Office  had  no 
attraction  for  him,  and  perhaps,  hardly  any  of  those  who 
hear  me,  can  be  aware  of  the  extraordinary  efforts  which 
were  required  to  induce  Mr.  Bright  to  become  sf  servant  of 
the  Crown.  It  was  in  the  crisis  of  1868,  in  regard  to  the 
Irish  question,  and  especially  when  the  fate  of  the  Irish 
Church  hung  on  the  balance,  that  it  was  my  duty  to  pro- 
pose to  Mr.  Bright  that  he  should  become  a  Cabinet  Minis- 
ter, and  I  do  not  know  I  ever  undertook  so  difficult  a  task. 
But  this  I  do  know,  that  from  11  o'clock  at  night  till  one  in 
the  morning,  we  steadily  debated  on  the  subject,  and  it  was 
only  at  the  last  moment  that  it  was  possible  for  him  to  set 


332  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

aside  the  repugnance  he  had  felt  to  doing  anything  which 
might,  in  the  eyes  of  anyone,  even  of  the  more  ignorant 
part  of-  his  fellow7countrymen,  appear  to  detract  in  the 
slightest  degree  from  that  lofty  independence  of  character 
which  he  had  hitherto  maintained,  and  which  I  venture  to 
say,  never  to  the  end  of  his  career,  was  for  a  moment  im- 
perilled. It  was  the  happy  lot  of  Mr.  Bright  to  unite  so 
many  intellectual  gifts,  that  if  we  dwelt  upon  them  alone, 
we  should  present  a  dazzling  picture  to  the  world. 

"But  it  was  also  his  happier  lot  to  teach  us  moral  lessons, 
by  the  simplicity,  by  the  consistency,  by  the  unfailing 
courage  and  constancy  of  his  life,  to  present  to  us  a  combi- 
nation of  qualities  which  carried  us  at  once  into  a  higher 
atmosphere.  The  sympathies  of  Mr.  Bright  were  not 
strong  only,  but  active.  They  were  not  sympathies  which 
answered  the  calls  made  upon  them,  but  they  were  the  sym- 
pathies of  a  man  who  sought  far  and  near  for  objects  upon 
which  to  bestow  the  inestimable  advantage  of  his  eloquence 
and  his  courage.  In  Ireland,  in  days  when  the  Irish  cause 
was  rare;  in  India  when  the  support  of  the  natives  was 
rarer  still;  in  America  at  a  time  when  Mr.  Bright,  fore- 
seeing the  probable  ultimate  issue  of  the  great  struggle  of 
1861,  and  when  he  stood  as  the  representative  of  an  exceed- 
ingly small  portion  of  the  educated  community  of  this 
country,  though  undoubtedly  he  represented  a  very  large 
portion  of  the  national  sentiment — in  all  these  cases 
Mr.  Bright  went  far  outside  of  the  necessities  of  his  posi- 
tion. Not  only  the  subjects  which  demanded  his  attention 
as  a  member  of  this  House,  but  whatever  touched  him  as  a 
man,  whatever  touched  him  as  a  member  of  the  great 
Anglo-Saxon  race,  all  these  questions  unasked,  obtained  not 
only  his  sincere  and  earnest,  but  his  enthusiastic  aid.  All 
the  causes  that  are  associated  with  the  matters  to  which  I 
have  referred,  as  well  as  many  others  obtained  from  his  pow- 
erful advocacy  was  a  distinct  advance  in  the  estimation  of  the 


GLADSTONE'S  FRIENDS.  333 

world,  and  distinct  progress  in  the  road  towards  triumphant 
success.  It  has  thus  come  about  that  we  feel  Mr.  Bright  is 
entitled  to  a  higher  eulogy  than  any  that  could  be  due  to 
intellect,  or  any  that  could  be  due  to  success,  and  of  mere 
success  he  was,  indeed,  a  conspicuous  example.  In  intellect 
he  might  lay  claim  to  a  most  distinguished  place,  but  the 
character  of  the  man  lay  deeper  than  his  intellect,  deeper 
than  his  eloquence,  deeper  than  everything  that  can  be  de- 
scribed or  seen  on  the  surface,  and  the  supreme  eulogy  which 
is  due,  I  apprehend  to  be  this,  that  he  elevated  political  life 
to  a  higher  zenith,  to  a  higher  elevation,  and  to  a  loftier 
standard,  and  that  he  has  thereby  bequeathed  to  his  country 
a  character  of  a  statesman  which  can  be  made  the  subject  not 
only  of  admiration  and  not  only  of  gratitude,  but  even  of 
what  I  do  not  exaggerate  in  calling,  as  it  has  been  well 
called  already  by  one  of  his  admirers,  an  object  of  reveren- 
tial contemplation. 

"In  the  encomiums  which  have  sprung  up  from  every  quar- 
ter there  is  no  discordant  minority,  however  small.  The 
sense  of  his  countrymen  is  the  sense  of  their  unanimity 
which  goes  forth  from  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land, 
and  I  do  not  know  that  any  statesman  of  my  time  has  ever 
had  the  happiness  of  receiving  upon  his  removal  from  this 
passing  world  the  honors  and  approvals  at  once  so  enthusi- 
astic and  so  universal  and  unbroken,  and  yet  none  could 
better  dispense  with  the  tributes  of  the  moment,  because  the 
triumphs  of  his  life  are  triumphs  recorded  in  the  advance 
of  his  country  and  in  the  condition  of  the  people.  His 
name  remains  indelibly  written  upon  the  annals  of  this  em- 
pire, and  written  upon  the  hearts  of  the  great  race  to  which 
he  belonged."  Mr.  Gladstone  was  deeply  moved  as  one 
by  one  his  old  comrades  were  passing  away.  The  ranks 
grew  thinner  day  by  day,  and  doubtless  the  pensive  line 
of  Charles  Lamb  would  often  occur  to  him : 

"All,  all  are  gone,  the  old  familiar  faces." 


CHAPTER   XXIX. 

SUNDAY  AT  HAWARDEN  CHURCH. 

Yes,  child  of  suffering,  thou  mayest  well  be  sure, 
He  who  ordained  the  Sabbath,  loved  the  poor. 
The  Sabbath  brings  its  kind  release, 
And  Care  lies  slumbering  on  the  lap  of  Peace. 

— Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

Bright  shadows  of  true  rest!  To  me  hosts  of  bliss, 

Heaven  once  a  week  ; 

The  next  world's  gladness  prepossessed  in  this; 

A  day  to  seek 

Eternity  in  time;  the  steps  by  which 

We  climb  above  all  ages;  lamps  that  light 

Man  through  this  heap  of  dark  days;  and  the  rich 

And  full  redemption  of  the  whole  week's  flight. 

—  Henry  Vaughan. 

In  the  early  autumn  of  1887,  Mr.  Graydon  Johnston  paid 
a  visit  to  Hawarden  Church,  and  spent  a  quiet  Sabbath  in 
that  arcadian  village  that  nestles  peacefully  amid  the  moun- 
tains of  Wales.  Mr.  Johnston  thus  describes  with  graphic 
beauty  that  memorable  Sabbath  and  its  simple  services. 

After  a  correspondence  with  the  Right  Hon.  W.  E. 
Gladstone,  M.  P.,  in  relation  to  which  I  shall  have  some- 
thing to  say  hereafter,  I  was  informed  that  he  was  staying 
at  his  country  seat,  Hawarden  Castle,  and  that  there  was  a 
possibility  that  he  would  read,  the  lesson  for  the  day  on 
Sabbath,  the  fourth  day  of  September,  1887,  so  after  a  quiet 
breakfast  at  the  famous  old  hostelry  of  the  "Queen,"  at 
Chester,  I,  in  company  with  W.  H.  Mooney,  of  Steuben- 
ville,  Ohio,  and  his  son  Robert,  took  my  seat  on  the  drag 
that  starts  every  Sunday  morning  in  the  season  for  Hawar- 
den Church.  We  rattled  through  the  streets  of  the  quaint 
old  walled  city  on  the  Dee,  passing  those  double-decked  rows 

334 


SUNDAY  AT  HAWABDEN  CHURCH.  335 

of  arcades,  strange,  old  survivals  of  bygone  'fashion  that 
may  yet  be  revived  by  some  architect  seeking  new  inspira- 
tion from  the  fancies  of  his  far-away  ancestors,  passed  the 
castle  and  the  race  course  on  the  Roodee,  known  as  the 
Chester  punch-bowl,  and  leaving  on  the  left  Eaton  Hall, 
where  the  Duke  of  Westminster  owns  the  most  superb  place 
of  modern  days,  the  only  fault  of  which  is  the  perfect  new- 
ness and  absolute  splendor  of  all  its  equipments,  we  struck 
out  over  the  level  plains  of  Flintshire  toward  where  the 
Welsh  Mountains  rose  in  dark  neutral  masses  aerainst  the 

o 

clear,  blue  sky  of  a  fine  fall  morning.  So  we  sped  on  for 
some  six  miles,  when  a  halt  was  called,  and  we,  the  stouter 
members  of  the  society,  were  invited  to  walk  up  the  hill  on 
which  the  village  and  church  of  Hawarden  are  perched. 

The  village  consists  of  a  single  street  about  half  a  mile  in 
length,  flanked  on  one  side  by  the  demesne  wall  and  on  the 
other  by  a  straggling  line  of  cottages,  all  very  picturesque 
and  old-fashioned.  The  avenue  through  the  castle  grounds 
crosses  the  main  street,  running  down  to  a  curious  pointed 
arch  in  a  sort  of  chapter  house,  whence  between  some  splen- 
did elms  a  superb  view  of  the  lowlands  of  Flintshire  and 
Chestershire  is  had.  Hawarden  is  an  old  place,  for  some- 
where in  the  tenth  century,  in  the  sixth  year  of  the  reign 
of  Conan,  King  of  North  Wales,  there  was  a  Christian 
temple  there,  with  which  many  singular  legends  are  con- 
nected. After  various  mesne  ownerships  and  transfers  the 
estate  became  vested  in  the  Glynn  family  early  in  ths  last 
century.  It  has  been  their  homestead  ever  since,  having 
finally  descended  through  his  mother,  Mrs.  Catharine  Glad- 
stone, sister  of  Sir  Stephen  Glynn,  in  1874,  to  W.  E.  Glad- 
stone, and  since  that  time  it  has  become  famous  as  the 
residing  place  of  the  statesman.  The  church  was  founded 
in  legendary  ages  by  one  Saint  Deiniol,  to  whom  the  10th  of 
December  is  dedicated  as  his  Saint's  Day  ;  it  is  a  substan- 
tial building  of  the  sixteenth  century,  with  an  admirable 


336  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

chime  of  six  bells,  dated  1742.  The  list  of  rectors,  who 
formerly  proved  wills,  held  their  own  consistorial  courts 
and  granted  marriage  licenses  by  special  permission  of  the 
Pope,  continued  at  the  Reformation,  goes  back  to  1180,  and 
even  now  the  rector  is  empowered  to  grant  marriage 
licenses. 

There  was  quite  a  number  of  curious  visitors  gathered 
around  the  side  door  of  the  church  waiting  to  see  the  Glad- 
stone family  arrive,  but  when  the  bells  stopped  ringing 
most  of  them  made  for  the  main  entrance  and  were  duly 
allotted  seats  in  the  body  of  the  church.  I  looked  up  the 
verger,  told  him  I  wanted  a  good  place  and  got  what  I 
wanted  ;  so  did  he,  with  sixty-three  cents  or  thereabouts  of 
cold  silver.  You  will  see  in  the  picture  of  the  church 
that  there  are  open  seats  between  the  altar  and  the  pulpit. 
Mr.  Gladstone  occupies  the  seat  in  front,  just  in  rear  of  the 
bench  fronting  on  the  aisle,  and  we  were  placed  exactly 
opposite  him  to  the  east  of  the  organ,  behind  the  pulpit. 
We  were  scarcely  settled  in  our  seats  when  Mr.  Gladstone 
walked  in  all  alone.  He  threw  a  shoulder  cape  of  broad- 
cloth lined  with  silk  wadding,  on  the  bench  next  the  reading 
desk,  which  faces  the  pulpit,  placed  a  new,  shiny,  black  silk 
hat  thereupon  and  knelt  in  intense  reverence  for  about  a 
minute.  He  was  dressed  in  a  low-cut  black  frock  coat,  a 
waistcoat  which  was  lower  still,  since  it  never  was  visible, 
a  black  cravat  tied  in  a  bow,  shepherd's  plaid  trousers,  and 
wore  a  red-brown  dogskin  glove  on  his  left  hand.  In  the 
buttonhole  of  his  coat  was  a  red  rose  and  a  bunch  of  green 
leaves  and  white  maybells,  and  he  looked  wonderfully  like 
his  innumerable  pictures,  save  that  he  was  somewhat  under- 
sized, but  then  one  is  apt  to  expect  that  such  a  great  man 
as  he  should  be  a  giant  in  his  physique,  as  he  is  in  intellect 
and  influence.  He  was  trim,  stalwart  and  erect,  wonderful 
to  see  when  one  remembers  that  he  almost  came  into  life 
with  the  current  century.  As  he  stood  with  his  back  to  the 


INTERIOR  OF  HAWARDBN  CHURCH. 


SUNDAY  AT  HAWARDEN  CHURCH.  337 

light  the  wrinkles  of  his  strong  features  were  blended  to 
sweet  benignity,  his  hand  was  white,  long  and  graceful, 
while  the  clear,  waxy  peachblow  of  his  countenance  was  set 
off  with  charming  effect  by  the  meager  white  hair  halo  round 
his  head.  A  double  tortoiseshell  eyeglass  dangled  from  a 
black  silk  ribbon,  and  with  this  his  fingers  sometimes  played 
or  toyed  in  the  arranging  of  a  stud  in  his  shirt  bosom. 

Mrs.  Gladstone  came  in  and  took  her  seat  a  minute  or 
<jwo  later.  She  was  dressed  in  a  maroon  cloth  wrap  and 
suit,  with  bonnet  to  match.  She  is  an  English  lady  of  the 
aquiline  aristocratic  type  that  Thackeray  has  drawn  so  often 
in  his  books,  and  very  closely  resembles  the  late  George 
Eliot.  She  carried  in  her  uncovered  hand  a  loose  bunch  of 
roses,  which  she  laid  down  after  the  preliminary  prayer. 
She  wore  an  old  miniature  set  as  a  brooch  and  a  diamond 
and  keeper  rings  on  the  third  finger  of  her  left  hand  ;  dur- 
ing the  prayer  she  kept  her  hands  folded,  sometimes  swaying 
them  to  and  fro,  as  in  an  ecstasy  of  devotion,  and  during 
the  creeds  she  faced  full  east  and  bowed  very  low.  Mrs. 
Gladstone  is  said  to  be  the  most  independent  and  original 
woman  in  England  as  regards  the  fashion  of  her  garments, 
and  the  personality  of  her  taste  in  costume  is  generally  con- 
ceded. To  me  she  seemed  to  be  a  lady  who  had  her  own 
ideas  of  what  was  right  and  proper  and  who  carried  out 
those  ideas  just  as  she  thought  fit ;  her  style  or  lack  of  style 
is  all  her  own  ;  it  is  none  the  worse  for  the  celebrated  states- 
man who  calls  her  wife  when  she  greets  him  at  the  door  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  after  a  debate,  and  takes  him  straight 
home  with  her.  The  third  seat  in  the  pew  was  occupied  by 
H.  G.  Gladstone.  Mrs.  Gladstone  joined  audibly  in  the 
responses,  sang  vigorously,  and  very  courteously  sent  us  a 
prayer  book  when  she  noticed  there  was  only  one  little  one 
between  three  of  us.  It  was  a  quarto,  and  I  handed  it 
over  to  Mooney,  who  had  rather  a  tough  time  dodging 
backward  and  forward  through  its  pages,  seeing  that  at 


333  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

home  he  worships  with  a  worthy  congregation,  the  mem- 
bers of  which  are  unskilled  in  the  intricacies  of  the 
Episcopal  service. 

During  the  most  of  the  time  Mr.  Gladstone  remained 
absolutely  motionless,  with  eyes  closed  in  still  adoration. 
He  joined  in  the  responses  and  in  the  singing,  but  when  he 
stood  up  he  twisted  his  left  foot  on  the  toe  with  a  very  pe- 
culiar wriggle  and  leaned  heavily  on  the  standard  of  the 
feet.  They  sang  "Just  as  I  Am,"  and  then  he  straightened 
up,  still  with  blind  eyes.  On  the  bench  in  front  of  him 
were  a  row  of  fat,  red-faced  little  pumpkins;  behind  him  a 
pretty  country  damsel,  the  rose  of  her  cheeks  framed  with 
a  long  boa  of  white  fur,  while  the  sunlight  blazed  through 
the  stained  glass  windows  into  splashes  of  many  rich  colors 
on  the  stone  flags  and  lit  up  in  radiant  daylight  the  green 
grass,  the  whispering  trees  and  the  gray  silent  monuments 
of  the  dead  that  one  could  see  in  God's  acre  back  through 
the  lancet  door  opening  from  the  chancel.  It  was  a  picture 
for  thinking  on;  the  boys,  the  old  man,  the  girl,  the 
graves. 

When  the  anthem  was  ended,  Mr.  Gladstone  walked 
swiftly  but  noiselessly  up  to  the  lectern,  a  splendid  eagle 
with  outstretched  wings,  done  in  carved  oak,  and  read  the 
story  of  Naaman  and  the  little  Syrian  maid.  His  style  was 
the  perfection  of  simplicity,  so  simple  that  one  was  almost 
tempted  to  believe  it  the  perfection  of  art.  At  first  the 
voice  was  muffled,  but  cleared  as  it  went  on;  the  rendering 
was  that  of  an  intelligent  layman;  there  was  no  clerical 
droning,  no  monotony.  From  time  to  time  he  would  bend 
up  the  leaves  of  the  folio  Bible  with  one  hand,  but  one  lost 
track  of  his  mannerisms  in  listening  to  what  he  had  to  say, 
and  that  I  think  is  sufficient  criticism  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
reading  of  the  lessons 

Between  the  first  and  second  lessons  he  seated  himself  on 
a  small,  square  stool  directly  in  front  of  the  reading  dask 


SUNDAY  AT  HAWARDEN  CHURCH.  339 

and  here  again  he  took  up  his  position  during  the  sermon, 
when  he  assumed  the  well-known  parliamentary  attitude 
necessitated  by  the  scandalous  inconveniences  of  St. 
Stephen's,  his  arms  and  legs  piled  and  crossed  one  on  top  of 
the  other,  the  whole  body  so  disposed  that  undiscovered  cat 
naps  were  quite  possible.  After  the  service  Mr.  Gladstone 
returned  to  his  seat;  he  waited  for  the  communion  and  as  I 
passed  out  he  and  Mrs.  Gladstone  were  both  bowed  in  the 
oblivion  of  devout  prayer, 

When  I  submitted  the  foregoing  for  approval  to  Mr. 
Gladstone  by  whom  it  was  returned  with  one  or  two  minor 
corrections,  I  asked  under  what  sanction  he,  as  a  layman, 
took  personal  part  in  the  church  service,  and  was  informed 
in  reply  that  any  layman  may  read  the  lessons  and  some 
other  portions  of  the  service,  and  that  at  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge the  lessons  are  always  read  by  the  undergraduates  to 
whom  prizes  for  excellence  in  elocution  are  given. 

Since  the  above  conversation  I  have  received  the  follow- 
ing letter  on  this  point  from  Rev.  Stephen  E.  Gladstone, 
son  of  the  ex-premier,  and  rector  of  Hawarden  : 

HAWARDEN,  CHESTER,  Sept.  24 — SIR  : — 1.  Usage  justi- 
fies a  layman  in  reading  the  lessons  at  public  worship.  It 
is  very  common  practice  in  the  Church  of  England.  It  is 
habitually  done  in  college  chapels,  where  one  of  the  stu- 
dents is  chosen  for  that  purpose.  In  some  churches  of  'by- 
gone years  it  was  a  very  usual  custom  (e.  g.  in  the  Channel 
Islands)  for  the  parish  clerk  to  read  the  lessons  and  give  out 
the  hymns,  and  I  believe  this  custom  still  survives. 

2.  No  rule   of   the   church   forbids   the  practice.     The 
canons  forbid  a  layman  to  undertake  public  preaching  or 
ministering  the  sacraments  in  the  congregation. 

3.  Precedents  justify  it.     During  the  first  two  centuries 
it  was  probably  the  custom  for  the  laymen  to  read  the  Holy 
Scriptures  from  the  pulpit,  that  is  the  reading  desk  placed 
in  the  naves  of  the  churches,  and  to  leave  the  reading  of  the 


340  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Gospel  to  the  deacons  from  the  bema  or  the  chief  pulpit 
near  the  altar. 

In  the  third  century  there  is  abundant  evidence  of  an 
order  of  readers  having  been  appointed  for  this  purpose, 
that  is  laymen  chosen  for  their  fitness  and  admitted  by  au- 
thority into  the  order;  but  not  admitted  necessarily  into  the 
higher  orders  of  the  ministry.  Even  catechumens  could  be 
readers  in  the  Church  of  Alexandria.  Going  further  back 
it  was  the  usual  practice  in  the  Jewish  Synagogues  for  lay- 
men to  read  the  Scriptures  in  public. 

4.  The  Catholic  doctrine  of  the  priesthood  of  the  laity 
teaches  the  fitness  of  any  faithful  and  baptised  member  of 
Christ's  body  to  perform  any  proper  religious  action  which 
has  not  been  expressly  reserved  by  apostolic  or  ecclesiasti- 
cal authority  to  the  several  orders  of  the  ministry. 

Yours  faithfully, 

STEPHEN  E.  GLADSTONE. 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

MR.   GLADSTONE  AT  HOME. 

The  first  sure  symptoms  of  a  mind  in  health, 

Is  rest  of  heart  and  pleasure  felt  at  home. 

— Edward  Joung. 

Go  into  the  house.  If  the  proprietor  is  constrained  and  defer- 
ring1, 'tis  of  no  importance  how  large  his  house,  how  beautiful  his 
grounds,  you  quickly  come  to  the  end  of  all.  But  if  the  man  is  self- 
possessed,  happy,  and  at  home,  his  house  is  deep  founded,  indefinitely 
large  and  interesting,  the  roof  and  dome,  buoyant  as  the  sky.—  R.  W. 
Emerson. 

Hawarden  castle — the  new  one — is  a  gray,  turreted, 
machicolated  mansion,  separated  from  the  park  by  fences 
and  hedges,  and  within  these  it  is  surrounded  by  gorgeous 
flower  beds  and  gravel  walks.  It  was  built  by  an  ancestor 
of  Mrs.  Gladstone  about  125  years  ago.  But  the  old 
castle,  of  which  little  except  the  keep  remains,  was  one  of  the 
links  in  the  chain  of  fortresses,  like  Conway  and  Carnarvon, 
which  the  Edwards  built  to  maintain  their  dominion  over 
Wales.  Still  earlier  it  had  been  in  turn  a  stronghold  of 

O 

Saxon,  Dane  and  Norman  ;  later  the  Cavaliers  and  Round- 
heads played  shuttlecock  with  it,  and  then  pulled  it  apart, 
if  not  feather  by  feather,  stone  by  stone. 

Many  visitors  to  Ha  warden  Castle  have  written  their  views 
of  the  place,  and  of  the  quiet,  regular  home  life  of  the  man 
who  has  been  called  by  one  critic  "perhaps,  on  the  whole, 
the  greatest  Englishman  of  the  century."  Some  have  de- 
scribed the  castle  itself — others  have  been  content  to  note 
the  kindly  affectionateness  of  all  members  of  the  family. 
"  Oriental  jars  and  costly  cabinets  of  Japanese  lacquer  are 
scattered  about  the  handsome  rooms  with  tasteful  careless- 

341 


342  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

ness;  and  here  and  there  are  specimens  of  art  needlework, 
in  the  revival  of  which  Mrs.  Gladstone  is  known  to  take  a 
great  interest.  But  the  peculiarity  of  the  house  is  the  vast 
flood  of  books,  which  no  one  apartment  can  contain;  out  of 
one  library  into  another,  and  into  drawing-room  and  dining- 
room,  books  have  flowed  in  a  resistless  stream,  pushing  other 
things  aside  and  establishing  themselves  in  their  place.  There 
are  books  new  and  old,  rare  and  common,  choice  editions 
and  ordinary  manuals  of  reference,  ponderous  tomes  of  con- 
troversial theology,  and  snappish  little  pamphlets  on  the 
currency,  with  other  equally  light  and  pleasant  subjects. 
Over  all  reigns  that  air  of  easy  and  natural  luxury  which 
forms  the  principal  charm  of  the  English  country  house 
proper. " 

"The  home  at  Ha  warden  Castle  is  eminently  calculated  to 
mould  the  thoughts  and  direct  the  course  of  an  intelligent 
and  receptive  nature.  There  was  the  father's  masterful  will 
and  keen  perception,  the  sweetness  and  piety  of  the  mother, 
wealth,  with  all  its  substantial  advantages  and  few  of  its 
mischiefs,  a  strong  sense  of  the  value  of  money,  a  rigid 
avoidance  of  extravagance  and  excess,  everywhere  a  strenu- 
ous purpose  in  life,  constant  employment,  and  concentrated 
ambition.  The  spirit  that  ruled  was  the  spirit  of  simplicity 
itself;  not  ascetic,  not  indifference  to  the  good  things  of  the 
world,  but  alien  alike  to  pomp,  ceremony  and  epicureanism. 
Time  was  held  as  a  trust  to  be  accounted  for  minute  by  min- 
ute. A  wilful,  purposeless  idler  would  have  found  himself 
aloof  and  estranged,  as  in  few  other  places.  Not  the  head 
of  the  house  alone,  but  mother,  sons  and  daughters,  follow- 
ing his  example,  found  employment  to  fill  the  day  from  an 
early  rising  to  an  early  bedtime.  The  extravagances  of  the 
London  season  and  the  supplementary  splendors  of  the  ordi- 
nary country  house  were  shut  out,  and  the  days  were  ordered 
with  as  little  ostentation  and  as  much  quiet  benevolence  and 
scrupulousness,  as  in  an  ideal  country  parsonage. 


THE  CASTLE, 


MR.   GLADSTONE    AT    HOME.  343 

"  The  daily  routine  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  life  at  Hawarden, 
is  well  known.  The  early  walk  to  church  before  breakfast; 
the  morning  devoted  chiefly  to  literary  work  and  the  severer 
kinds  of  business  and  study  ;  half  an  hour  or  an  hour  for 
reading  and  writing  after  luncheon  ;  the  afternoon  walk  or 
visit,  or  tree  cutting  ;  correspondence  and  reading  after  a  cup 
of  tea  until  dinner-time.  As  a  rule,  Mr.  Gladstone  read 
after  dinner  until  about  11:15.  He  greatly  enjoyed  an 
occasional  game  at  backgammon.  Of  chess  as  a  game,  he  had 
the  very  highest  opinion,  but  he  found  it  too  long  and  excit- 
ing. Music  he  delighted  in,  and  all  the  members  of  his 
family  were  musical,  and  two  or  three  were  performers 
above  the  average.  His  wishes  in  this  direction,  and  the  eve- 
ning was  spent  in  a  sacred  home  concert  in  which  Mr.  Glad- 
stone took  an  earnest  and  interested  part.  "Rock of  Ages, " 
"Lead,  Kindly  light,"  and  "Depths  of  Mercy,"  were 
among  his  favorite  hymns. 

"During  the  later  years,  Mr.  Gladstone's  family  dis- 
couraged him  from  cutting  down  trees.  Few  forms  of  exer- 
cise are  more  violent  and  trying  to  the  heart,  and  at  Mr. 
Gladstone's  age  the  risk  was  considerable.  Tree-cutting  had 
its  dangers,  but  in  his  thirty  years'  experience  of  it,  Mr. 
Gladstone  had  been  fortunate  in  escaping  them.  The  only 
serious  inconvenience  he  ever  suffered  was  from  a  chip  which 
caused  a  slight  abrasion  of  the  eyeball.  Once  an  accident 
almost  occurred.  Mr.  Henry  Gladstone  had  climbed  a  large 
lime  tree  which  Mr.  Gladstone  had  begun  to  cut,  '  when 
without  any  warning,  and  owing  to  unexpected  rot  in  its 
center,  the  tree  fell.  At  the  moment  Mr.  Henry  was  high 
up,  and  on  the  underneath  side.  To  the  onlookers  relief,  he 
managed  to  get  round  the  trunk  as  the  tree  was  falling,  and 

O  ,      O  <-" 

escaped  with  a  shaking.  The  bough  on  which  he  had  stood 
was  smashed.  Mr.  Gladstone  never  cut  down  a  tree  for  the 
sake  of  exercise.  A  doubtful  tree  was  tried  judicially. 
Sometimes  its  fate  hangs  in  the  balance  for  years.  The 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

opinion  of  the  family  was  consulted,  and  frequently  that  of 
visitors.  Mr.  Ruskin  sealed  the  fate  of  an  oak.  Sir  J. 
Millais  decided  that  the  removal  of  an  elm  would  be  a  clear 
improvement.  The  trees  of  Hawarden  were  treated  as  the 
precious  gifts  of  Nature,  with  which  no  human  hand  should 
deal  rashly. 

"What  ever  might  be  the  occupation  of  the  moment,  Mr. 
Gladstone's  life  at  Hawarden  was  a  period  of  contented  and 
perfect  enjoyment.  It  was  full  of  interest  and  peace.  Ever 
ready  to  take  his  part  in  local  matters,  whether  it  is  the 
promotion  of  an  intermediate  school  or  a  new  water  supply, 
the  building  of  a  gymnasium  or  the  furthering  of  fruit  and 
flower  cultivation,  he  delighted  in  the  quiet  and  familiar 
scenes  far  removed  from  the  worry  and  storms  of  public 
life.  He  lived  among  his  own  people,  and  for  his  own  en- 
joyment asked  for  nothing  more." 

It  is  well  known  that  he  found  great  delight  in  the  com- 
pany of  little  people.  Their  guileless  childhood  helped  to 
keep  his  heart  young.  A  visitor  to  Hawarden  tells  a  story 
of  little  Dorothy  Drew,  in  her  infancy.  Says  the  visitor  : 

"Dear  little  Dorothy,  she  can  just  toddle  about  from 
room  to  room,  and  she  brings  a  ray  of  sunlight  with  her 
wherever  she  goes.  I  never  saw  a  prettier  sight  than  when 
she  just  now  ran  through  the  open  door  which  divides  the 
drawing  room  from  the  '  Grand  Old  Man's '  sanctuary,  and, 
pulling  at  the  lapels  of  his  dressing  gown,  drew  him  im- 
periously away  from  Homer  or  the  Blue  books  or  whatever 
was  engaging  him.  The  first  intimation  we  heard  in  the 
next  room,  was  a  peal  of  laughter  on  Mr.  Gladstone's  part 
at  the  obvious  necessity  of  capitulating  to  that  daring  in- 
vasion, as  musical  and  hearty  as  ever  came  from  human 
lips — for  his  laugh,  as  you  know,  is  one  of  his  greatest  at- 
tractions. Presently  the  '  Grand  Old  Man '  and  the  little 
child,  separated  by  eighty  years  of  time,  come  hand  in  hand 
together  into  the  drawing  room.  Mrs.  Gladstone  runs  to 


MR.   GLADSTONE    AT    HOME.  345 

the  piano  and  strikes  up  a  lively  waltz  tune,  and  in  a  second 
the  two  partners  are  dancing  together,  the  'Grand  Old 
Man'  putting  into  his  pirouettes  a  lot  of  funny,  old- 
fashioned  little  steps,  learned  of  our  great-grandmothers 
seventy-five  years  ago,  which  it  was  impossible  to  view  with- 
out delight  and  applause,  although  so  much  pathos  mingled 
with  the  comedy  in  the  touching  scene." 

When  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gladstone  entertain  visitors,  poli- 
tics are  seldom  discussed  ;  party  politics  never,  unless  in- 
troduced by  their  guests.  This  is  partly  because  men  of 
opposite  sides  are  not  infrequently  present,  but  mainly  be- 
cause Mrs.  Gladstone  considers  it  desirable  that  her  dis- 
tinguished husband  should  be  relieved  of  the  cares  and 
worries  of  public  life,  and  should  breathe  in  the  shelter  of 
home  a  more  quiet  and  serene  atmosphere.  "I  have  never," 
says  Theodore  Stan  ton,  "in  any  private  company,  large  or 
small,  known  Mr.  Gladstone  himself  to  start  a  political  con- 
troversy. If  such  is  begun  by  others  he  manages,  as  soon 
as  possible,  to  change  the  subject. 

' '  Alike  as  a  talker  and  an  orator  he  is  full  of  resources, 
he  draws  upon  a  long  and  rich  experience,  having  associated 
with  some  of  the  greatest  statesmen  and  literateurs  of  the 
last  sixty  years.  His  conversation  is  enriched  by  anecdotes 
and  incidents  connected  with  the  notable  men  that  he  has 
met.  He  is  a  great  lover  of  books,  and  they  form  one  of 
his  favorite  topics.  How  varied  and  world-wide  are  his 
tastes !  From  Homer  and  Dante  to  the  latest  work  of  fiction 
and  romance.  Nothing  comes  amiss  to  him.  I  remember 
visiting  his  official  residence  in  Downing  street  when  he  was 
Prime  Minister.  On  the  drawing-room  table  lay  'Silas 
Lapham '  and  '  Treasure  Island, '  side  by  side  with  other 
books  of  a  more  solid,  but,  perhaps,  of  a  less  entertaining 
character.  Among  novelists,  Scott  is  his  favorite.  He 
considers  it  a  sign  of  the  degeneracy  of  public  taste  that 
the  '  Wizard  of  the  North  '  should  be  so  largely  superseded 


346  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

by  writers  of  inferior  power.  In  conversation  with  him  on 
one  occasion  he  instituted  a  comparison  between  Scott  and 
George  Eliot  rather  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  latter.  As 
a  warm  admirer  of  George  Eliot,  I  ventured  to  put  in  a 
plea  for  her.  I  spoke  of  her  deep  philosophy,  her  humor, 
her  knowledge  of  human  nature,  her  graphic  descriptions 
of  country  scenery,  life  and  character.  '  Yes, '  answered 
Mr.  Gladstone,  '  George  Eliot  is  all  you  say,  and  more ; 
but  I  was  speaking  of  the  novelist  as  a  story  teller  and  a 
depicter  of  character,  and  as  such  Scott  is  still  without  a 
rival.'  George  Eliot  herself  had  intense  admiration  for 
Scott,  and  read  many  of  his  novels  aloud  to  her  father. 

The  daily  mail  was  enormous.  It  flowed  in  from  all  parts 
of  the  world  and  from  all  classes  of  society;  from  pitmen, 
weavers  and  agricultural  laborers;  from  princes,  politicians 
and  theologians.  It  brought  letters  of  violent  abusiveness 
and  letters  of  unctuous  flattery;  books  which  the  authors 
would  be  glad  to  have  Mr.  Gladstone  review,  and  presents 
of  many  sorts.  Not  more  than  one-tenth  of  it  was  ever 
seen  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  however.  It  was  sorted  by  some 
member  of  the  household,  generally  by  his  daughter,  who 
separates  the  wheat  from  the  chaff.  In  times  of  political 
activity  he  usually  had  one  or  two  political  secretaries,  but 
at  other  seasons  the  only  help  he  has  is  given  by  his  children. 
He  never  made  use  of  such  labor-saving  devices  as  stenog- 
raphy or  the  typewriter.  His  letters  and  his  manuscripts 
were  written  from  beginning  to  end,  regardless  of  length, 
in  his  own  hand. 

But  the  economical,  expeditious  post-cards  he  used  freely 
for  his  briefer  communications,  and  so  much  does  he  appre- 
ciate their  convenient  simplicity,  that  when  he  went  into 
mourning  for  the  death  of  his  brother  some  years  ago,  he 
did  not  discontinue  using  them,  but  had  a  supply  printed 
with  a  mourning  border. 


MR.   GLADSTONE    AT    HOME.  347 

No  impression  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  character  is  so  false  as 
that  which  deprives  him  of  the  sense  of  humor.  The  pas- 
sionate and  almost  fanatical  earnestness  of  his  convictions 
compelled  him  to  resent  all  trifling  in  the  discussion  of  pub- 
lic questions,  but  in  private  conversation,  erudite  and  even 
recondite  as  he  can  be,  he  welcomed  the  turn  that  opened 
the  way  for  a  spontaneous  laugh.  To  see  him  smile  with  a 
boyish  twinkle  in  the  corner  of  the  eyes,  as,  perhaps,  he 
pretended  to  tease  Mrs.  Gladstone  at  the  luncheon  table, 
was  to  see  a  face  which  neither  the  portrait  painter  nor  the 
caricaturist,  neither  Millais  nor  Tenniel,  has  ever  caught. 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

MRS.    GLADSTONE. 

Her  eyes  were  homes  of  silent  piayer — Lord  Tennyson. 

Who  can  find  a  virtuous  woman?  for  her  price  is  above  rubies. 
The  heart  of  her  husband  doth  safely  trust  in  her.  *  *  *  She  will 
do  him  good  and  not  evil,  all  the  days  of  her  life. — Solomon. 

They  the  royal-hearted  women  are,  who  nobly  love  the  noblest, 
yet  have  grace  for  needy  suffering  lives  in  lowliest  place,  carrying  a 
choicer  sunlight  in  their  smile,  the  heavenliest  ray  that  pitieth  the 
vile. — George  Eliot. 

Mrs.  Gladstone's  entire  life  has  been  passed  in  the  pretty 
village  of  Hawarden,  as  she  did  not  consider  her  residence 
in  London  to  be  really  living,  but  merely  a  concession  to 
duties  of  state.  She  was  born  in  Hawarden  castle,  which 
belonged  to  her  father,  Sir  Stephen  Glynne,  a  baronet  of 
fine  old  family.  Her  mother,  a  daughter  of  Lord  Brabrooke, 
was  a  woman  of  remarkable  force  of  character,  so  clearly 
demonstrated  in  her  training  of  the  two  boys  and  two  girls, 
in  which  task  she  had  no  assistance,  as  Sir  Stephen  died 
when  his  eldest  child  was  about  eight  years  old.  Soon  after, 
her  brother,  the  Hon.  George  Neville,  became  rector  of 
Hawarden  parish,  which  had  the  reputation  of  being  one  of 
the  worst  districts  in  England;  and  he  and  Lady  Glynne  set 
energetically  to  work  to  reform  the  rustics. 

Mr.  Gladstone  first  saw  this  angel  of  the  household,  in  the 
winter  of  183&.  She  was  his  neighbor  at  a  dinner  party  in 
London,  and  seems  not  to  have  been  especially  impressed  by 
the  slim,  dark-haired  young  man  who  had  recently  entered 
parliament  as  member  for  Newark.  It  was  over  a  year 
later  that  they  met  again.  That  time  it  was  in  Rome,  where 
"the  handsome  Miss  Glynnes"  were  staying  with  their 

348 


MRS.   GLADSTONE.  349 

mother.  A  few  months  later,  there  was  a  double  wedding  in 
the  little  parish  church  at  Hawarden.  The  second  couple 
were  the  younger  Miss  Glynne  and  Lord  Lyttelton.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  that  the  daughter  of  the  second  couple 
was  afterward  Lady  Cavendish,  wife  of  the  earl  who  was 
assassinated  one  evening  in  Phoenix  Park. 

Of  the  eight  children  who  came  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gladstone, 
five  are  now  living.  Of  the  sons,  two  are  in  England,  one 
as  rector  of  the  village  church  in  which  his  father  and  mother 
were  married;  the  other  represented  West  Leeds  in  Parlia- 
ment. The  third  is  engaged  in  commercial  pursuits  in 
India.  One  of  the  daughters  is  married;  while  Helen 
Gladstone,  named  for  her  father's  only  sister,  who  died  in 
early  womanhood,  holds  the  honorable  position  of  principal 
of  Newnham  College  at  Cambridge.  She  is  one  of  the  most 
profoundly  educated  women  in  England;  and  the  college  of 
which  she  is  the  head,  is  one  of  two  founded  for  the  higher 
education  of  women.  Both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gladstone  have 
always  been  on  the  most  tender  and  affectionate  terms  with 
their  children.  Mrs.  Gladstone  nursed  them  all  herself. 
She  watched  their  infancy  and  growing  years,  as  religiously 
as  for  the  past  thirty-five  years  she  has  protected  the  waking 
and  sleeping  hours  of  her  husband.  She  looked  after  them 
all  along,  as  if  she  had  been  the  mistress  of  a  humble  cottage, 
instead  of  the  lady  of  a  proud  castle  against  which  the 
storms  of  centuries  have  hurled  themselves.  When  out  of 
office,  Mr.  Gladstone  taught  his  children  Italian.  The  girls 
were  educated  at  home  by  governesses  in  English,  French 
and  German.  The  boys  wore  the  jackets  of  Eton,  and 
afterward  had  lodgings  in  the  grounds  at  Oxford. 

Once  upon  a  time,  some  one  asked  Mr.  Gladstone  to  what 
he  most  owed  his  success.  His  answer  came  promptly: 
"To  my  wife." 

Tnat  every  man's  career  has  been  more  or  less  swayed  by 
his  wife,  is  probably  true,  says  a  writer  in  the  Chicago 


350  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Times-Herald.  In  the  case  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  the  wifely 
influence  would  seem  to  have  had  as  much  to  do  as  his  own 
commanding,  forceful  genius.  Mrs.  Gladstone  has  not  been 
gifted  with  brilliant  intellect,  nor  has  she  been  called  upon 
to  fill  an  important  role  in  the  society  life  of  the  times,  yet 
she  has  through  prolonging  the  yean  of  her  husband,  placed 
England  under  a  debt  of  gratitude  that  it  will  find  hard  to 
repay.  For  years  past  she  has  guarded  her  husband's  per- 
sonal interests  with  an  all-absorbing  vigilance — a  vigilance 
which  compels  the  admiration  of  those  who  have  followed 
the  domestic  side  of  the  great  statesman's  course.  Her 
figure  in  the  right-hand  corner  of  the  ladies'  gallery  of  the 
House  of  Commons  has  been  almost  as  familiar  to  members 
and  visitors,  as  that  of  the  distinguished  man  on  the  floor 
below.  Day  after  day,  she  would  drive  down  with  her  hus- 
band, and  from  her  elevated  place  listen  patiently  to  long, 
tiresome  discussions,  which  of tener  than  not,  got  no  further 
than  a  monotone.  The  famous  sherry  mixture  which  helped 
Mr.  Gladstone  through  tedious  sessions,  was  of  her  decoc- 
tion. To  but  one  other  were  the  ingredients  ever  revealed. 
To  John  Morley  belongs  the  confidence  of  Mrs.  Gladstone 
on  this  point,  the  secret  being  transferred  only,  as  Mrs. 
Gladstone  herself  explained,  because  there  was  a  possibility 
that  some  day  an  unforeseen  accident  would  keep  her  away 
from  her  husband's  side. 

During  the  entire  period  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  parliament- 
ary life,  it  was  the  wisdom  of  the  devoted  wife,  that  there 
should  be  no  discussion  of  House  of  Commons  matters  at 
home.  Once  the  carriage  door  closed  under  the  clock  tower 
of  the  house  of  parliament,  there  was  no  reference  to  the 
speech  of  the  husband  or  the  debate  of  which  it  had  been  a 
part.  On  the  night  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  speech  on  Home 
Rule,  when  all  London  was  ringing  with  it,  and  the  news- 
papers of  the  world,  Avere  eagerly  receiving  the  reports  of 
it,  it  is  said  that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gladstone  were  quietly 


MRS.   GLADSTONE.  351 

seated  in  the  study  of  the  Downing  street  residence,  cutting 
the  pages  of  the  new  book  their  friend  Cardinal  Newman  had 
just  sent  them.  It  was  to  this  unvarying  rule,  that  Mr. 
Gladstone  more  than  once  declared  he  owed  the  fact  that  no 
debate  in  the  house  had  ever  caused  him  a  sleepless  night. 

Blessed  herself  with  an  uncommonly  vigorous  constitu- 
tion and  unceasing  health,  there  has  been  no  time  in  the 
united  lives  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gladstone,  that  she  was  forced 
to  relax  her  alert  vigil  over  the  physical  maladies  which 
might  project  themselves  upon  him.  The  minor  worries 
she  has  also  been  careful  to  shield  him  from.  It  is  related 
that  after  one  general  election,  when  the  appeal  to  the  coun- 
try had  resulted  adversely  to  Mr.  Gladstone's  Irish  policy, 
Mrs.  Gladstone  was  found  somewhat  depressed  by  a  visitor 
at  Hawarden,  while  the  Grand  Old  Man  was  serenely  at 
work  upstairs.  "  Never  mind, "  said  the  visitor  sympathet- 
ically, "there  is  One  above  who  will  bring  things  right  in 
His  own  good  time.''  "Yes,  indeed,"  said  the  distracted 
lady,  "  He  will  undoubtedly  bring  things  right,  but  He  will 
forget  about  his  luncheon  if  I  do  not  call  him  down." 

Mrs.  Gladstone's  social,  educational  and  charitable  plans 
always  met  with  the  hearty  approval  of  her  husband.  Their 
children  were  wont  to  say  that  he  was  more  proud  of  her, 
than  of  anything  else  in  the  world,  not  excepting  his  own 
honorable  and  splendid  achievements.  In  the  latter  years  of 
his  life  he  seemed  to  divide  his  tenderest  affections  between 
the  partner  of  his  youth,  vigorous  manhood  and  old  age, 
and  the  prattling  grandchild,  Dorothy  Drew.  The  little 
one  has  a  nursery  at  the  top  of  the  castle,  and  a  pigeon-house 
with  strutting,  cooing  inhabitants  in  the  greenery  of  the 
dignified  old  park  below. 

The  story  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  public  career  is  in  part  his 
wife's,  for  in  all  his  undertakings  she  has  been  a  powerful 
factor.  Wherever  he  journeyed  she  has  gone  ;  in  whatever 
work  he  has  been  engaged,  she  has  been  at  his  side,  master- 


352  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

ing  details  and  keeping  pace  with  him.  Mr.  Gladstone,  at 
all  times,  upon  every  fitting  occasion,  paid  tribute  to  the 
heart  and  mind  of  his  wife,  and  attributed  to  her  com- 
panionship and  encouragement,  the  stimulus  and  solace  with- 
out which  he  could  not  have  essayed  the  tasks  he  performed. 
She  was  his  helpmate  from  their  earliest  years  together,  and 
as  time  slipped  away  their  love  cast  a  protecting  shelter 
about  them.  His  reliance  upon  her  counsel  seems  to  have 
been  unconditional.  She  succeeded  in  making  his  home 
life  a  happy  one.  She  mitigated  the  humiliations  of  defeat. 
She  gave  comfort  in  the  trying  hours  of  suspense.  She 
imparted  some  of  her  own  joyousness  to  his  graver  nature. 
She  alone  shared  his  labor  and  diversions,  his  triumphs  and 
defeats.  She  has  been  that  God-given  treasure,  a  perfect  wife. 

Mrs.  Gladstone's  practical  charities  have  overflowed  with 
every  opportunity.  When  the  needy  have  cried,  she  has 
been  ready  with  sympathy  and  succor. 

During  the  cholera  epidemic  in  London,  in  1866,  Mrs. 
Gladstone  established  a  home  for  the  little  ones  left  orphans. 
She  later  created  a  convalescent's  free  home,  which  is  now 
in  a  lovely  house  in  Essex,  surrounded  by  lawns  and  shrub- 
bery and  with  a  forest  close  behind.  Every  year  more  than 
1,000  men,  women  and  children  enjoy  the  benefits  of  this 
beautiful  home. 

An  orphanage  at  Hawarden  is  another  of  Mrs.  Gladstone's 
good  works.  It  was  started  in  a  very  severe  winter,  when 
the  poor  were  starving  for  lack  of  work.  Mr.  Gladstone 
gave  occupation  to  as  many  men  as  he  could,  in  cutting 
footpaths  through  the  grounds  and  woods  of  Hawarden, 
while  Mrs.  Gladstone  gave  shelter  to  their  motherless  chil- 
dren, in  a  large  house  lent  to  her  by  her  brother,  Sir  Stephen 
Glynne.  When  the  pressure  of  that  season  relaxed,  the 
home  became  an  orphanage  for  boys  who  go  to  the  village 
school,  until  old  enough  to  learn  a  trade,  which  is  then 
taught  them. 


J 


MRS.  GLADSTONE. 


MR.  GLADSTONE  READING  PRAYKR  us  HAWARDEN  CHURCH. 


MRS.    GLADSTONE.  353 

In  addition  to  these  most  helpful  institutions,  Mrs.  Glad- 
stone— always  with  her  husband's  aid  and  counsel — has 
helped  to  form  and  carry  on  almost'  numberless  others. 
For  many  years — more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century — when 
in  London,  she  also  visited  the  London  hospitals  every  Mon- 
day morning. 

Mrs.  Gladstone  is  said  to  have  been  singularly  beautiful 
in  youth,  a  claim  borne  out  by  a  picture  of  her  when  a  girl, 
and  she  is  a  gracious  and  lovely  lady. 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

WORDS   OF   WISDOM   SELECTED    FROM   MR.    GLADSTONE'S   BOOKS 
AND    SPEECHES. 

The  heart  is  wiser  than  the  intellect. — J.  G.  Hofland. 

His  eloquent  tongue  so  well  seconds  his  fertile  invention  that  no 
one  speaks  better  when  suddenly  called  forth.  His  attention  never 
languishes,  his  mind  is  always  before  his  words;  his  memory  has  all 
its  stock  so  turned  into  ready  money  that  without  hesitation  or  delay 
it  supplies  whatever  the  occasion  may  require. — Erasmus. 

Now,  as  words  affect,  not  by  any  original  power,  but  by  repre- 
sentation, it  might  be  supposed  that  their  influence  over  the  passions 
should  be  but  light ;  yet  it  is  quite  otherwise  ;  for  we  find  by  experi- 
ence that  eloquence  and  poetry  are  as  capable,  nay  indeed  much  more 
capable,  of  making  deep  and  lively  impressions  than  any  other  arts, 
and  even  than  nature  itself  in  very  many  cases. — Edmund  Burke. 

Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  only  a  great  Statesman,  but  a  dis- 
tinguished man  of  letters.  He  has  left  as  a  legacy  for 
thoughtful  minds  quite  a  small  library  of  literary  produc- 
tions. Eight  compact  volumes,  entitled,  ' '  Gleanings  from 
Past  Years,"  beside  his  classic  works,  "Homer,  and  the 
Homeric  Age;"  "Juventus  Inundi,"  and  a  goodly  num- 
ber of  pamphlets  on  matters  of  current  interest  constitute 
a  grand  treasury  of  the  highest  order  of  cultured  thought. 
In  this  and  the  following  chapter  we  present  a  series  of 
selections  from  the  wide  range  of  his  wonderful  literary 
work. 

THE    SERVICE    OF    GOD. 

The  service  of  God  in  this  world  is  an  unceasing  service, 
without  interval  or  suspense.  But  under  the  conditions  of 
our  physical,  intellectual,  and  social  life,  a  very  large  por- 
tion of  that  service  is  necessarily  performed  within  the  area 

354 


GLADSTONE'S  WORDS  OF  WISDOM.  355 

which  is  occupied  by  this  world  and  its  concerns,  and  within 
which  every  Christian  grace  finds  perpetual  room  for  its 
exercise — but  for  its  exercise  under  circumstances  not  allow 
ing  the  ordinary  man,  unless  in  the  rarest  cases,  that  near- 
ness to  access  to  the  things  of  God,  that  directness  of 
assimilation  to  the  divine  life,  which  belongs  to  a  day  conse- 
creted  by  spiritual  service. 

So  the  grace  and  compassion  of  our  Lord  have  rescued 
from  the  open  ground  of  worldly  life,  a  portion  of  that  area 
and  have  made  upon  it  a  vineyard  seated  on  a  very  fruitful 
hill,  and  have  fenced  it  in  with  this  privilege  that,  whereas 
for  our  six  days'  work,  the  general  rule  of  direct  contact 
must  for  the  mass  of  men  be  with  secular  affairs.  Within 
this  happy  precinct  there  is  provided,  even  for  that  same 
mass  of  men,  a  chartered  emancipation,  and  the  general 
rule  is  reversed  in  favor  of  a  direct  contact  with  spiritual 


things. 


RELIGION    IN    THE    ELIZABETHAN  WRITERS. 


Four  names  are  typical  of  the  Elizabethan  age  in  letters — 
Shakespeare,  Bacon,  Spenser,  Hooker.  The  magnificent 
intellect  of  Bacon  is  held  by  Mr.  Dowden  to  have  been  pro- 
foundly indifferent  to  religion.  Is  this  truly  so  ?  I  do  not 
presume  to  deny  that  in  Bacon's  character  ' '  the  world  that 
now  is"  weighed  for  more  than  "that  which  is  to  come." 
But  I  would  appeal  with  some  confidence  to  his  account,  for 
example,  of  the  fall  of  man,  as  a  proof  that  he  rendered  a 
solid  faith  and  fealty  to  the  Christian  dogma.  As  for 
Spenser,  it  is  surely  notable  that,  forming  himself  as  he  did 
upon  the  poets  of  the  Italian  romance,  he  utterly  renounced 
their  uncleanness,  and,  as  it  were,  "passed  by  on  the  other 
side."  More  still  is  it  to  be  noted  that,  while  far  from 
being  the  most  robust  of  the  band,  Spenser  is  the  one  who 
seems  to  have  taken  the  best  aim  at  the  literary  restoration 
of  a  true  theory  of  life.  All  virtue,  all  duty,  all  activeness 


356  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

of  the  hu.man  character,  are  set  out  by  him,  under  the 
forms  of  chivalry,  for  our  instruction  ;  but  his  ideal  knight 
is  Christian  to  the  core. 

And  on  his  breast  a  bloody  cross  he  bore — 
The  dear  remembrance  of  his  dying  Lord, 

For  Whose  sweet  sake  that  glorious  badge  he  wore, 
And,  dead  as  living,  ever  Him  adored. 

Nor  was  Hooker  less  a  restorer  than  his  great  compeers. 
For  was  it  not  given  to  him  to  recall  our  theology  from  the 
hungry  region  of  mere  polemics  to  that  of  positive  and 
fruitful  truth,  and  to  become  the  father  of  a  long  line  of 
divines,  reared  undoubtedly  in  the  mere  Anglican  paddock, 
yet  not  without  name  and  honor  in  the  wide  pastures  of  the 
Christian  world? 

THE    PERPETUAL    YOUTHFULNESS    OF    THE    PSALMS. 

The  Psalms  composed  for  the  public  worship  of  the 
Hebrews,  from  two  to  three  thousand  years  ago,  constitute 
down  to  the  present  day  for  Christians,  the  best  and  highest 
book  of  devotion.  A  noteworthy  fact  even  on  the  surface 
of  it;  more  noteworthy  still  when  we  go  below  the  surface 
into  the  meaning.  The  Hebrews  were  Semitic,  Christendom 
is  chiefly  Aryan;  the  Hebrews  were  local,  Christendom  is 
world-wide;  the  Hebrews  were  often  tributary,  and  finally 
lost  their  liberties  and  place  among  the  nations;  Christianity 
has  mounted  over  every  obstacle,  and  has  long  been  the 
dominating  power  of  the  world.  The  Hebrews  had  no  lit- 
erature outside  their  religion,  nor  any  Fine  Art;  Christen- 
dom has  appropriated,  and  even  rivalled,  both  the  literature 
and  the  art  of  the  greatest  among  the  ancients.  This  strange 
book  of  Hebrew  devotion  had  no  attraction  outside  Hebrew- 
ism, except  for  Christians;  and  Christians  have  found 
nothing  to  gather,  in  the  same  kind,  from  any  of  the  other 
religions  in  the  world.  The  stamp  of  continuity  and  identity 
has  been  set  upon  one,  and  one  only,  historic  series.  One 
and  one  only  thread  runs  down  through  the  whole  succession 


GLADSTONE'S  WORDS  OF  WISDOM.  357 

of  the  ages;  and  among  many  witnesses  to  this  continuity, 
the  Psalms  are  probably  the  most  conspicuous.  This  stamp 
purports  to  be,  and  to  have  been  all  along,  Divine;  and  the 
unparalleled  evidence  of  results  all  goes  to  show  that  it  is 
not  a  forgery. 

THE  OLD  BELIEF  AND  THE  NEW. 

' '  You  will  hear  much  to  the  effect  that  the  divisions 
among  Christians  render  it  impossible  to  say  what  Chris- 
tianity is,  and  so  destroy  the  certainty  of  religion.  But  if 
the  division  among  Christians  is  remarkable,  not  less  so  is 
their  unity  in  the  great  doctrines  which  they  hold.  Well 
nigh  fifteen  hundred  years — years  of  a  more  sustained 
activity  than  the  world  has  ever  before  seen — have  passed 
away  since  the  great  controversies  respecting  the  Deity  and 
the  Person  of  the  Redeemer  were,  after  a  long  agony,  de- 
termined. As  before  that  time,  in  a  manner  less  defined, 
but  adequate  for  their  day,  so  ever  since  that  time,  amid  all 
chance  and  change,  more,  aye,  many  more  than  ninety-nine 
in  every  hundred  Christians  have  with  one  will  confessed 
the  Deity  and  Incarnation  of  our  Lord  as  the  cardinal  and 
central  truths  of  our  religion.  Surely  there  is  some  com- 
fort here,  some  sense  of  brotherhood,  some  glory  in  the 
past,  some  hope  for  the  times  that  are  to  come.  On  one, 
and  only  one,  more  of  the  favorite  fallacies  of  the  day  I 
will  yet  presume  to  touch.  It  is  the  opinion  and  boast  of 
some,  that  man  is  not  responsible  for  his  belief.  Lord 
Brougham  was  at  one  time  stated  to  have  given  utterance  to 
this  opinion,  whether  truly  I  know  not.  But  this  I  know ; 
it  was  my  privilege  to  hear  from  his  own  lips  the  needful 
and  due  limitation  of  that  proposition.  l '  Man, "  he  said, 
"  is  not  responsible  to  man  for  his  belief."  But  as  before 
God  one  and  the  same  law  applies  to  opinions  and  to  acts, 
or  rather  to  inward  and  to  outer  acts,  for  opinions  are  in- 
ward acts.  Many  a  wrong  opinion  may  be  guiltless  because 
formed  in  ignorance,  and  because  that  ignorance  may  not 


358  LIFE    OF   GLADSTONE. 

be  our  fault ;  but  who  shall  presume  to  say  there  is  no 
mercy  for  wrong  actions  also,  when  they,  too,  have  been 
due  to  ignorance,  and  that  ignorance  has  not  been  guilty  ? 
The  question  is  not  whether  judgments  and  actions  are  in 
the  same  degree  influenced  by  the  condition  of  the  moral 
motives.  If  it  is  undeniable  that  self  love  and  passion 
have  an  influence  upon  both,  then,  so  far  as  that  influence 
goes,  for  both  we  must  be  prepared  to  answer.  Should  we, 
in  common  life,  ask  a  body  of  swindlers  for  an  opinion  upon 
swindling,  or  of  gamblers  for  an  opinion  upon  gambling,  or 
of  misers  upon  bounty  ?  And  if  in  matters  of  religion  we 
allow  pride  and  perverseness  to  raise  a  cloud  between  us 
and  the  truth,  so  that  we  see  it  not,  the  false  opinion  that 
we .  form  is  but  the  index  of  that  perverseness  and  that 
pride,  and  both  of  them,  and  for  it  as  their  offspring,  we 
shall  be  justly  held  responsible.  Who  they  are  upon  whom 
this  responsibility  will  fall  it  is  not  ours  to  judge.  These 
laws  are  given  to  us,  not  to  apply  presumptuously  to  others, 
but  to  enforce  honestly  against  ourselves.  Next  to  a  Chris- 
tian life,  my  friends,  you  will  find  your  best  defense  against 
reckless  novelty  of  speculation,  in  sobriety  of  temper,  and 
in  sound  intellectual  habits.  Be  slow  to  stir  inquiries  which 
you  do  not  mean  particularly  to  pursue  to  their  proper  end. 
Be  not  afraid  to  suspend  your  judgment,  or  feel  and  admit 
to  yourselves  how  narrow  are  the  bounds  of  knowledge. 
Do  not  too  readily  assume  that  to  us  have  been  opened  royal 
roads  to  truth,  which  were  heretofore  hidden  from  the 
whole  family  of  man ;  for  the  opening  of  such  roads  would 
not  be  so  much  favor  as  caprice.  If  it  is  bad  to  yield  a 
blind  submission  to  authority,  it  is  not  less  an  error  to  deny 
to  it  its  reasonable  weight.  Eschewing  a  servile  adherence 
to  the  past,  regard  it  with  reverence  and  gratitude,  and 
accept  its  accumulations  in  inward  as  well  as  outward 
things,  as  the  patrimony  which  it  is  your  part  in  life  both 
to  preserve  and  to  improve. 


GLADSTONE  S   WORDS    OF   WISDOM.  359 

THE    INCOMPARABLE     GRANDEUR   OF  THE    PSALMS   AS 
PENITENTIAL  POEMS. 

Let  us  turn  to  the  penitential  Psalms,  and  most  of  all  to 
the  fifty-first,  in  which  King  David  sounds  the  lowest 
depths  of  sorrow  and  shame  for  sin,  and  has  provided  for 
the  penitent  of  every  age  and  every  character  the  medicine 
that  his  case  required.  On  these  Psalms  as  a  whole,  on  this 
Psalm  in  particular,  and  again  in  the  thirty-eighth  Psalm, 
most  of  all  in  its  first  moiety,  let  us  fasten  our  attention  for 
a  moment.  Have  modern  learning  and  research  succeeded 
in  extracting  from  all  the  sacred  books  of  aJL  the  ancient 
religions  of  the  world,  anything  like,  I  do  not  say  a  parallel, 
but  an  ever  so  remote  approach  to  them  ?  The  great  dis- 
course of  our  Lord  to  Nicodemus,  in  the  third  chapter  of 
St.  John,  might  find  in  these  compositions,  a  basis  broad 
enough  to  sustain  the  whole  of  his  startling  doctrine,  ' '  ex- 
cept a  man  be  born  again,  he  can  not  see  the  kingdom  of 
God." 

Penitence  thus  lying  at  the  door  of  the  process  by  which 
man  is  appointed  to  ascend  to  holiness,  this  golden  book 
supplies,  beyond  all  others,  the  types  and  aids  for  attaining 
it  in  all  its  stages.  All  that  special  class  of  virtues,  which 
were  unknown  to  the  civilized  world  at  the  time  when  the 
Apostles  preached  them,  had  been  here  set  forth  in  act  a 
thousand  years  before,  and  stored  up  for  use,  first  within 
the  narrow  circle  of  the  Jewish  worship,  and  then  in  the 
Church,  which  claims,  and  which  may  yet  possess,  the  wide 
world  for  its  inheritance. 

THE    WORK    OF    CHRISTIANITY. 

<  No  more  in  the  inner  than  the  outer  sphere  did  Christ 
come  among  us  as  a  conqueror,  making  His  appeal  to  force. 
We  were  neither  to  be  consumed  by  the  heat  of  the  Divine 
presence,  nor  were  we  to  be  dazzled  by  its  brightness.  God 
was  not  in  the  storm,  nor  in  the  fire,  nor  in  the  flood,  but 


360  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

He  was  in  the  still  small  voice.  This  vast  treasure  was  not 
only  to  be  conveyed  to  us,  and  to  bo  set  down  as  it  were  at 
our  doors;  it  was  to  enter  into  us,  to  become  part  of  us, 
and  to  become  that  part  which  should  rule  the  rest;  it  was 
to  assimilate  alike  the  mind  and  heart  of  every  class  and 
description  of  men.  While,  as  a  moral  system,  it  aimed  at 
an  entire  dominion  in  the  heart,  this  dominion  was  to  be 
founded  upon  an  essential  conformity  to  the  whole  of  Gur 
original  and  true  essence.  It  therefore,  recognized  the 
freedom  of  man,  and  respected  his  understanding,  even 
while  it  absolutely  required  him  both  to  learn  and  to  unlearn 
so  largely.  The  whole  of  the  new  lessons  were  founded  upon 
principles  that  were  based  in  the  deepest  and  best  regions 
of  his  nature,  and  that  had  the  sanction  of  his  highest  .fac- 
ulties in  their  moments  of  calm,  and  in  circumstances  of 
impartiality.  The  work  was  °>ne  of  restoration,  of  return, 
and  of  enlargement — not  of  innovation.  A  space  was  to  be 
bridged  over,  and  it  was  vast;  but  a  space  where  all  the 
piers,  and  every  foundation-stone  of  the  connecting  struct- 
ure, were  to  be  laid  in  the  reason  and  common-sense,  in  the 
history  and  experience  of  man.  This  movement  was  to  be 
a  revolutionary  movement,  but  only  in  the  sense  of  a  return 
from  anarchy  to  order. ' 


CHARTER   XXXIII. 

WORDS    OF  WISDOM    SELECTED    FROM    MR.   GLADSTONE'S    BOOKS 
AND    SPEECHES. CONTINUED. 

Your  words  bring  daylight  with  men   when   you   speak.— George 

Eliot. 

Language  is  a   solemn  thing;   it  grows  out  of  life — out  of   its 

agonies  and  ecstasies,  its  wants  and  its  weariness.     Every  language 

is  a  triumph,  in  which  the  soul  of  those  who  speak  it  is  enshrined. — 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes. 

How  charming  is  Divine  Philosophy! 

Not  harsh  and  crabbed,  as  dull  fools  suppose, 

But  musical  as  is  Apollo's  lute, 

And  a  perpetual  feast  of  nectar'd  sweets, 

Where  no  crude  surfeit  reigns.  — John  Milton. 

HISTORY  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  A  PURPOSE. 

History,  then,  complex  and  diversified  as  it  is,  and  pre- 
senting to  our  view  many  a  ganglion  of  unpenetrated  and 
perhaps  impenetrable  enigmas,  is  not  a  mere  congeries  of 
disjointed  occurrences,  but  is  the  evolution  of  a  purpose 
steadfastly  maintained,  and  advancing  towards  some  con- 
summation, greater  probably  than  what  the  world  has  yet 
beheld,  along  with  the  advancing  numbers,  power,  knowl- 
edge, and  responsibilities  of  the  race.  That  purpose  is  not 
always  and  everywhere  alike  conspicuous  ;  but  it  is  not  like 
the  river  in  the  limestone  tract,  which  vanishes  from  the 
surface,  and  works  its  way  beneath,  only  to  reappear  with 
renovated  force  ?  or  like  the  sun,  which  returns  to  warm 
us  after  the  appointed  space  of  night. 

And  tricks  his  beams,  and  with  new  spangled  ore 
Flames  in  the  forehead  of  the  morning  sky. 

Its  parts  are  related  to  one  another.  The  great  lines  of 
human  destiny  have  every  appearance  of  converging  upon 
a  point.  As  the  Mosaic  writer  at  the  outset 'of  Genesis  de- 

301 


362  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

clares  the  unity  of  the  world,  and  as  Doctor  Whewell,  in  a 
passage  of  extraordinary  magnificence,  countersigns  this  tes- 
timony by  predicting  its  catastrophe  in  the  name  of  cosmic 
science ;  as  again  the  mind  of  an  individual,  by  the  use  of 
reflection,  often  traces  one  pervading  scheme  of  education 
in  the  experiences  of  his  life ;  so  probably  for  the  race, 
certainly  for  its  great  central  web  of  design,  which  runs  un- 
broken from  Adam  to  our  day,  there  has  been  and  is  a  pro- 
found unity  of  scheme  well  described  by  the  poet  Ten- 
nyson : 

Yet  I  doubt  not  through  the  ages  one  increasing  purpose  runs, 
And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widened  with  the  process  of  the  suns. 

"At  sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners,"  sometimes  by 
conscious  and  sometimes  by  unconscious  agency,  this  pur- 
pose is  wrought  out.  Persons  and  nations  who  have  not 
seen  or  known  one  another,  nevertheless  co-operate  and  con- 
tribute to  a  common  fund,  available  for  their  descendants 
and  themselves. 

THE  UNATTAINABLE  A  MEANS  OF  ATTAINING. 

The  old  are  but  too  conscious,  in  retrospect,  that  their 
own  path  of  life  is  a  path  strewn  all  along  with  waste  ma- 
terial, and  it  can  hardly  be  otherwise  than  seemly  and  ap- 
propriate for  them  to  wish  that  those  who  follow  them  in 
the  long  procession  of  the  human  race  may  make  fuller 
profit  of  their  means  and  opportunities.  Like  the  divine 
ideal  of  the  human  form,  ever  present  to  the  mind  of  the 
Greek  artist,  the  vocation  of  man  is  one  greater  than  he  can 
fulfill;  but  the  unattainable  is  itself  a  means  of  attaining, 
if  it  leads  and  empowers  us,  as  it  did  him,  to  reach  a  point 
in  the  scale  of  progress,  of  which  we  must  otherwise  have 
fallen  short. 

CHRISTIANITY   AND  THE  GREEK  LANGUAGE. 

There  was  at  one  time  a  habit  of  pointing  to  the  Old  Tes- 
tament and  the  Jewish  nation  as  the  matrix  of  all  human 


HEKBEKT  GLADSTONE. 


GLADSTONE'S  WORDS  OF  WISDOM.  363 

greatness,  all  mental  excellence.  There  is  still  a  tendency 
to  glorify  the  Jewish  Scriptures  under  the  poor  and  narrow 
name  of  the  Hebrew  literature.  JXow,  to  my  mind,  it  is  a 
literature  absolutely  incommensurable  with  the  literature  of 
other  lands.  As  compared  with  these,  both  its  source  and 
its  aim  were  far  higher,  but  they  were  also  far  more  limited. 
Its  mission  was  to  touch  humanity  at  its  centre,  but  at  its 
centre  only.  It  was  to  work  out,  for  its  time  and  place, 
the  highest  part  of  the  Providential  design  for  the  education 
of  man.  But  other  parts  were  left  to  other  hands,  and  those 
other  hands  were,  in  the  Divine  Counsels,  shaped  and  fitted 
for  them.  Under  the  coming  Christian  civilization,  the 
whole  nature  of  man  in  all  its  parts  was  for  the  first  time  to 
be  trained,  and  the  internal  harmony  and  balance  of  those 
parts  was  to  be  restored  and  consolidated.  It  was  a  com- 
plex organization,  of  which  the  spiritual  and  ruling  factor 
was  made  ready  in  Judea  for  use  in  the  Christian  Church, 
the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  earth.  What  may  be  called  in  the 
widest  sense  the  intellectual  factor  was  matured  elsewhere. 
It  had  its  training  chiefly  among  the  Greeks.  In  prepara- 
tion for  the  preaching  of  the  gospel,  it  was  given  to  that 
unique  race  to  establish  an  intellectual  mastery,  and  an 
intellectual  unity,  by  their  literature  and  language,  through- 
out the  vast  range  of  the  Roman  sway.  It  was  through  a 
concurrence  surely  not  fortuitous,  that  at  the  time  when 
our  Saviour  came  into  the  world,  the  language  of  the  Greeks 
had  become  its  ruling  language.  I  suppose  it  to  be  a  ques- 
tion still  open  among  the  learned,  whether  and  in  what 
degree,  the  Saviour  himself  employed  it  in  His  ministry. 

IS  NOT  MAN  THE  ACME  OF  CREATIVE  POWER  ? 

Torn  and  defaced  as  is  the  ideal  of  our  race,  yet  have 
there  not  been,  and  are  thejre  not,  things  in  man,  in  his 
frame,  and  in  his  soul  and  intellect,  which,  taken  at  their 
height,  are  so  beautiful,  so  good,  so  great,  as  to  suggest  an 


364:  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

inward  questioning,  how  far  creative  power  itself  can  go 
beyond  what,  in  these  elect  specimens,  it  has  exhibited  ? 
Not  that  such  a  questioning  is  to  be  answered;  it  is  only 
warrantable  as  expansion,  not  as  limitation,  as  a  mode  of 
conveying  that  what  has  been  actually  shown  us.  What  our 
eyes  have  seen  and  our  hands  have  handled,  would,  but  for 
experience,  have  been  far  beyond  the  powers  of  our  poor 
conception  to  reach ;  that  humanity  itself,  deeply  considered, 
touches  the  bounds  of  the  superhuman. 

AN  ADDRESS  TO  STUDENTS. 

On  April  16th,  1860,  Mr.  Gladstone  visited  Edinburg, 
where  he  was  made  an  Hon.  L  L  D,  and  was  installed  Lord 
Rector  of  the  University.  In  his  inaugural  address  he  spoke 
to  the  students  on  ' '  The  great  value  of  a  University  train- 
ing as  a  preparation  for  after  life,"  and  referred  to  the 
work  of  the  University  as  "covering  the  whole  field  of 
knowledge,  human  and  divine." 

The  new  Lord  Rector  concluded  his  splendid  address  to 
the  students  with  a  magnificent  peroration.  The  following 
passage  from  this  address  is  characteristic,  and  as  an  exhorta- 
tion, to  young  students  is  most  valuable:— 

*  'I  am  Scotchman  enough  to  know  that  among  you  there 
are  always  many  who  are  already,  even  in  their  tender  years, 
fighting  with  a  mature  and  manful  courage  the  battle  of  life. 
When  they  feel  themselves  lonely  amidst  the  crowd,  when 
they  are  for  a  moment  disheartened  by  that  difficulty  which 
is  the  rude  and  rocking  cradle  of  every  kind  of  excellence, 
when  they  are  conscious  of  the  pinch  of  poverty  and  self- 
denial,  let  them  be  conscious  too,  that  a  sleepless  Eye 
is  watching  them  from  above,  that  their  honest  efforts 
are  assisted,  th'eir  humble  prayers  are  heard,  and 
all  things  are  working  together  for  their  good.  Is 
not  this  the  life  of  faith  which  walks  by  your  side  from 
your  rising  in  the  morning  to  your  lying  down  at  night, 


GLADSTONE'S  WORDS  OF  WISDOM.  365 

which  lights  up  for  you  the  cheerless  world,  and  transfigures 
all  that  you  encounter,  whatever  be  its  outward  form,  with 
hues  brought  down  from  heaven?  These  considerations  are 
applicable  to  all  of  you.  You  are  all  in  training  here  for 
educated  life,  for  the  higher  forms  of  mental  experience ; 
for  circles  limited,  perhaps,  but  yet  circles  of  social  influence 
and  leadership.  Some  of  you  may  be  chosen  to  greater 
distinctions  and  heavier  trials,  and  may  enter  into  that  class 
of  which  each  member  while  he  lives  is  envied  or  admired 

And  when  he  dies  he  bears  a  lofty  name, 
A  light,  a  landmark,  on  the  cliffs  of  fame. 

And,  gentlemen,  the  hope  \f  an  enduring  fame  is,  without 
doubt,  a  powerful  incentiva  to  virtuous  action;  and  you 
may  suffer  it  to  float  before  you  as  a  vision  of  refreshment, 
second  always,  and  second  with  long  interval,  to  your  con- 
science and  the  will  of  God.  For  an  enduring  fame  is  one 
stamped  by  the  judgment  of  the  future,  that  future  which 
dispels  illusions  and  smashes  idols  into  dust.  Little  of  what 
is  criminal,  little  of  what  is  idle,  can  endure  even  the  first 
touch  of  the  ideal;  it  seems  as  though  this  purging  power, 
following  at  the  heels  of  man,  and  trying  his  work,  were  a 
witness  and  a  harbinger  of  the  great  and  final  account.  So 
then,  the  thirst  of  an  enduring  fame  is  near  akin  to  the  love 
of  true  excellence.  But  the  fame  of  the  moment  is  a  dan- 
gerous possession  and  a  bastard  motive;  and  he  who  does 
his  acts  in  order  that  the  echo  of  them  may  come  back  as 
soft  music  in  his  ears,  plays  false  to  his  noble  destiny  as  a 
Christian  man,  places  himself  in  continual  danger  of  dally- 
ing with  wrong,  and  taints  even  his  virtuous  actions  at  their 
source.  *  *  *  Nor  are  there  any  two  habits  of  mind 
more  distinct  than  that  which  chooses  success  for  its  aim  and 
covets  after  popularity,  and  that,  on  the  other  hand,  which 
values  and  defers  to  the  judgments  of  our  fellowmen  as 
helps  in  the  attainment  of  truth.  But  I  would  not  confound 


366  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

with  the  sordid  worship  of  popularity  in  after  life  the  grace- 
ful and  instinctive  love  of  praise  in  the  uncritical  pe- 
riod of  youth.  On  the  contrary,  I  say,  avail  yourselves 
of  that  stimulus  to  good  deeds,  and  when  it  proceeds  from 
worthier  sources,  and  lights  upon  worthy  conduct,  yield 
yourselves  to  the  warm  satisfaction  it  inspires." 

THE  WONDERFUL  POWER  OF  HOMER. 

'To  one  only  among  the  countless  millions  of  human 
T>eings  has  it  been  given  to  draw  characters,  by  the  strength 
of  his  own  individual  hand,  in  lines  of  such  force  and  vigor 

'  O 

that  they  have  become,  from  his  day  to  our  own,  the  com- 
mon inheritance  of  civilized  man.  Ever  since  his  time, 
besides  finding  his  way  into  the  usually  impenetrable  East, 
he  has  provided  literary  capital  and  available  stock-in-trade 
for  reciters  and  hearers,  for  authors  and  readers,  of  all  times 
and  of  all  places  within  the  limits  of  the  western  world — 

Adjice  Maeoniden,  aquo,  ceu  fonte  perenni, 
Vatum  Pieriis  ora  rigantur  aquis. 

Like  the  sun,  which  furnishes  with  its  light  the  close 
courts  and  alleys  of  London,  while  himself  unseen  by  their 
inhabitants,  Homer  has  supplied  with  the  illumination  of 
his  ideas,  millions,  of  minds  that  were  never  brought  into 
direct  contact  with  his  works,  and  even  millions  more  that 
have  hardly  been  aware  of  his  existence.  As  the  full  flow 
of  his  genius  has  opened  itself  out  into  ten  thousand  irri- 
gating channels  by  successive  sub-division,  there  can  be  no 
cause  for  wonder  if  some  of  them  have  not  preserved  the 
pellucid  clearness  of  the  stream.  Like  blood  from  the 
great  artery  of  the  heart  of  man,  as  it  returns  through 
innumerable  veins,  it  is  gradually  darkened  in  its  flow. 
The  very  universality  of  the  tradition  has  multiplied  the 
causes  of  corruption  That  which,  as  to  documents,  is  a 
guarantee,  because  their  errors  correct  one  another,  as  to 


GLADSTONE'S  WORDS  OF  WISDOM.  367 

ideas,  is  a  new  source  of  danger,  because  everything  depends 
upon  constant  reference  to  the  finer  touches  of  an  original, 
which  has  escaped  from  view.  And  this  universality  is  his 
alone.  An  Englishman  may  pardonably  think  that  his  great 
rival  in  the  portraiture  of  character  is  Shakspeare;  a  Briton 
may  even  go  further,  and  challenge,  on  behalf  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  a  place  in  this  princely  choir  second  to  no  other 
person  but  these.  Yet  the  fame  of  Hamlet,  Lady  Macbeth, 
Othello,  or  Falstaff,  and  much  more  that  of  Varney,  or 
Ravenswood,  or  Caleb  Balderstone,  or  Meg  Merriles,  has 
not  yet  come,  and  may  never  come,  to  be  a  world-wide  fame. 
On  the  other  hand,  that  distinction  has  long  been  inalienably 
secured  to  every  character  of  the  first  class  who  appears  in 
the  Homeric  poems.  He  has  conferred  upon  them  a  death- 
less inheritance.' 

1  Even  when  the  sun  of  her  glory  had  set  there  was  yet 
left  behind  an  immortal  spark  of  the  ancient  vitality,  which, 
enduring  through  all  vicissitudes,  kindled  into  a  blaze  after 
two  thousand  years;  and  we  of  this  day  have  seen  a  Greek 
nation,  founded  anew  by  its  own  energies,  become  a  centre 
of  desire  and  hope,  at  least  to  Eastern  Christendom.  The 
English  are  not  ashamed  to  own  their  political  forefathers 
in  the  forests  of  the  northward  European  Continent;  and 
the  later  statesmen,  with  the  lawgivers  of  Greece,  were  in 
their  day  glad,  and  with  reason  glad,  to  trace  the  bold  out- 
line and  solid  rudiments  of  their  own  and  their  country's 
greatness  in  the  poems  of  Homer.  Nothing  in  those  poems 
offers  itself — to  me  at  least — as  more  remarkable  than  the 
deep  carving  of  the  political  characters,  and  what  is  still 
more,  the  intense  political  spirit  which  pervades  them.  I 
will  venture  one  step  further,  and  say  that  of  all  the  coun- 
tries of  the  civilized  world,  there  is  no  one  of  which  the 
inhabitants  ought  to  find  that  spirit  so  intelligible  and  acces- 
sible as  the  English. 


368  LIFE  OF  GLADSTONE. 

THE  CHARACTER  OF  CHARLES  I. 

I  heartily  wish  that  the  annals  of  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  of 
England  were  Aad  and  studied  in  the  Council  Chamber  of 
Naples.  We  have  there  an  instance  of  an  ancient  Throne 
occupied  by  a  monarch  of  rare  personal  endowments.  He 
was  devout,  chaste,  affectionate,  humane,  generous,  refined, 
a  patron  of  letters  and  of  art,  without  the  slightest  tinge  of 
cruelty,  though  his  ideas  were  those  of  "pure  monarchy"; 
frank  and  sincere,  too,  in  his  personal  character,  but  unhap- 
pily believing,  that  under  the  pressure  of  State  necessity, 
such  as  he  might  judge  it,  his  pledges  to  his  people  need  not 
be  kept.  That  king,  upon  whose  refined  figure  and  linea- 
ments,  more  happily  immortalized  for  us  by  Vandyke,  than 
those  of  any  other  of  our  sovereigns,  who  to  this  day,  few  Eng- 
lishmen can  look  without  emotion,  saw  his  cause  ruined,  in 
despite  of  a  loyalty  and  enthusiasm  sustaining  him,  such  as 
now  is  a  pure  vision  of  the  past.  It  was  not  ruined  by  the 
strength  of  the  anti-monarchial  or  puritanical  factions,  nor 
even  by  his  predilections  for  absolutism;  but  by  that  one 
sad  and  miserable  feature  of  insincerity,  which  prevented 
the  general  rally  of  his  well-disposed  and  sober-minded  sub- 
jects round  him,  till  the  time  had  passed.  The  Commonwealth 
had  been  launched  down  the  slide  of  revolution,  and  tho-e 
violent  and  reckless  fanatics  had  gained  the  upper  hand, 
who  left  the  foul  stain  of  his  blood  on  the  good  name  of 
England. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

AN  AMERICAN  LADY5S   ESTIMATE  OF  GLADSTONE. 

Thank  God  for  him.     He  loyally 

Bore  banners  true  of  righteousness 
And  freedom.     Love  can  do  no  less 

Than  yield  him  praise  and  fealty. 
A  kingly  man  whose  royalty 

Lay  in  his  power  to  help  and  bless. 

— Marianne  Famingham. 

Posterity  will  rank  Gladstone  among  the  few  great  Statesmen  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  Sixty  years  ago,  %vhen  he  was  thirty  years 
of  age,  Macaulay  predicted  the  political  eminence  which  Gladstone 
would  attain.  That  prediction  has  been  amply  fulfilled.  His  chief 
claim  to  gratitude  and  greatness  is  found  in  his  advocacy  of  Home 
Rule,  because  the  measure  was  so  unpopular  with  the  majority  of  his 
countrymen. — Cardinal  Gibbons. 

Those  who  know  him  best,  whether  friend  or  foe,  agree 
that  this  is  the  last  time  the  greatest  of  English  ministers 
will  personally  appear  before  his  country  for  instructions  or 
reproof.  Mr.  Gladstone's  final  electoral  campaign  is  the 
beginning  of  the  voluntary  close  of  the  most  beneficent,  the 
noblest,  the  most  illustious  career  in  modern  statesmanship. 

I  sat  in  the  house  of  commons  that  night,  May  31,  1886, 
when  he  was  informed  by  one  of  his  colleagues  of  the  result 
of  the  conference  of  liberals  under  Mr.  Chamberlain's  mis- 
leadership.  He  had  entered  the  chamber  for  many  previous 
nights  with  a  little  jauntiness — for  Mr.  Gladstone  is  not 
an  austere  man  in  appearance  or  in  demeanor.  On  the 
contrary,  the  gleam  of  humor  may  always  be  caught,  furtive 
but  keen,  in  his  fine  old  eyes;  and  around  the  corners  of  his 
mouth  plays  that  variable  expression  which  perfectly 
intimates  his  moods — now  gay  and  almost  boyish,  now  serene 

369 


370  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

and  genial,  now  engaged  in  suppressing  a  too  hilarious 
impulse,  abhorrent  to  the  pervading  dignity  of  the  place, 
now  demure  and  sombre,  as  if  clouded  by  passing  regret  or 
shadowed  by  apprehension  of  treachery;  now  solemn,  grim, 
resolute,  now  angry  and  ready  for  fight.  No  man's  face 
could  mirror  more  truly  the  deeps  and  shallows  of  his 
consciousness.  He  has  shown  during  all  these  trying  days 
and  exhausting  nights  splendid  spirit,  its  tendency  uniformly 
upward,  its  temper  singularly  sanguine  and  courteous,  until 
within  these  days  when  the  intrigue  of  Mr.  Chamberlain 
among  his  own  following,  was  clearly  splitting  the  radical 
timber;  and  although  in  the  end  Mr.  Chamberlain  wrill  be 
wedged  therein  to  do  no  good  for  himself,  the  split  in  the 
timber  has  been  felt  in  the  old  minister's  heart. 

He  has  entered  the  house  for  several  nights  past  with  an 
effort  toward  blitheness.  His  dress  has  been  faultless.  A 
frock  coat  of  fine  black  cloth,  discloses  an  ample  front  of 
linen,  expanding  within  a  low  cut,  rather  old-fashioned  style 
of  vest.  Brown  trousers  end  in  snuff-colored  silk  hose,  and 
neat  low  shoes.  He  takes  his  seat  in  the  middle  of  the 
treasury  bench,  with  apparent  self -unconsciousness,  and  pro- 
ceeds to  fold  his  arms,  cross  his  legs,  and  think  with  ap- 
parently, no  more  sense  of  attitude  or  audience,  than  a  boy 
alone  in  a  school-room.  His  contemplation  has  the  symp- 
toms of  disturbed  sleep,  for  he  is  restive  and  troubled.  His 
mouth  is  drawn  down  and  in,  until  the  lips  seem  a  thin, 
irregular,'  uncertain  line.  The  face  is  broad,  noble,  all  but 
majestic  in  its  firm  lines  of  vigorous  old  age.  The  scanty 
fringe  of  scattered  gray  around  chin  and  cheeks,  meets  the 
sparse  silver  locks  upon  his  bald,  great  head.  It  is  a  great 
head  physically — massive,  square,  broad,  angled  sharply  at 
the  cheek  bones  and  ears  ;  a  head  which  would  be  chosen  by 
a  painter  for  a  Statesman's  model,  but  not  for  that  of  an 
actor  or  artisan  or  merchant.  Its  formation  expressed 
a  unique  endowment  of  intellectuality  and  will  power. 


AN    AMERICAN    LADY'S    ESTIMATE    OF    GLADSTONE.       371 

It  is  such  a  head  as  a  great  thinker  would  have  in  any 
domain  of  pure  study.  It  recalls  no  other  great  head 
unless  around  the  mouth,  Daniel  Webster's — across  the  eye- 
brows, Beethoven's.  I  have  seen  him  sit  absorbed  in  mere 
contemplation  for  a  half  hour  at  a  time,  moving  no  muscle 
but  the  ends  of  the  fingers  of  both  hands,  and  these  move 
incessantly.  When  the  thinking  fit  is  closed  and  an  action 
resolved  upon,  he  proceeds  to  its  effectuation  with  alertness. 
He  is  quick  in  all  his  movements. 

It  was  said  that  Disraeli  never  descended  to  the  use  of 
mucilage  when  he  could  avoid  it,  preferring  aromatic  seal- 
ing wax,  which  he  pressed  with  an  Egyptian  ring  ;  or,  if 
the  obnoxious  gum  had  to  be  used,  he  dipped  his  cambric 
handkerchief  into  the  tiny  finger  bowl  of  eau  de  cologne  or 
water  with  rose  leaves,  and  bathed  the  sticking  place  with 
that.  Mr.  Gladstone,  it  is  necessary  to  confess,  runs  the 
gummed  edge  of  the  envelope  across  his  tongue  as  if  he 
had  a  relish  for  it,  and  then  runs  the  superscription  across 
the  back,  and  dries  it  with  a  blotter  in  the  most  clerkly 
fashion.  He  never  supplies  autographs  to  collectors.  His 
disinclination  is  not  due  to  dislike  of  the  pen,  or  detestation 
of  personal  requests,  but  to  want  of  time. 

A  very  interesting  attitude  is  his  when  he  listens  to 
another  speaking  in  the  house  of  commons,  especially  to 
one  of  his  colleagues  or  supporters.  I  had  the  good  for- 
tune to  be  present  a  few  nights  since,  when  Charles  Russell 
addressed  a  crowded  auditory  on  the  late  Home  Rule  bill. 
Charles  Russell  is  undoubtedly  the  most  graceful,  plausible 
and  adroit  orator  in  the  house.  He  has  no  verbiage.  He 
has  few  metaphors.  He  never  sins  against  style  in  gesture 
or  diction.  Less  pleasing  than  Daniel  Dougherty,  he  is 
more  uniformly  virile ;  less  witty,  he  is  more  satiric  ;  less 
unctuous,  he  is  more  merciless.  They  very  much  resemble 
each  other  in  the  mode  of  speaking,  bodily,  and  intellectu- 
ally. They  even  suggest  each  other  in  face,  although 


372  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Dougherty  is  longer  and  Russell  broader  in  the  counten- 
ance. Russell's  voice  is  not  so  melodious  as  Dougherty's, 
and  lacks  that  mellow  quality  which  defies  time,  bad  court 
rooms,  and  great  conventions.  Both  are  Irish,  of  course, 
of  the  best  vintage  of  their  race,  and  both,  like  wine,  are 
better  orators  for  age.  As  Russell  faced  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  one  of  the  most  memorable  nights  of  the  pro- 
longed debate  on  the  fated  bill,  all  eyes  were  fastened  on 
him,  and  no  man  present  awaited  with  more  visible  pleasure 
the  delight  to  come,  than  Mr.  Gladstone  himself,  who  as- 
sumed his  usual  pose  of  rest  and  interest — crossed  legs, 
folded  arms,  and  body  well  set  against  the  leathern  high 
back  of  the  treasury  bench. 

Every  argument  that  ingenuity  could  devise  for  the  bill, 
Russell  cited  in  its  support.  From  classic  urns  he  plucked 
the  flowers  that  dropped  their  bright  hue  and  disseminated 
occasional  odors  along  a  roadway  far  from  gentle  or  easy. 
The  great  crises  of  British  history  he  recalled  to  warn  those 
who  forgot  the  disasters  of  the  past,  in  their  willingness  to 
wreck  the  present.  With  well-blended  caution  and  courage 
he  exploded  the  fears  of  bigots  and  the  threats  of  bullies; 
and  every  paragraph  was  as  dry  and  substantial  as  if  he  had 
expended 'a  day  upon  it  alone.  Mr.  Gladstone  received 
every  sentence  as  if  addressed  exclusively  to  him,  and  from 
time  to  time,  turned  to  those  behind  him  to  nod  his  acquies- 
cence, or  look  vehemently  across  the  table  as  if  he  expected 
to  see  the  opposition  wither  and  vanish  before  Russell's 
scorching  blasts.  Often  he  interpolated  "Yes!  yes!"  and 
often  "Hear,  hear!"  and  from  time  to  time,  as  the  well 
modulated  tones  of  the  speaker  rose  and  fell  with  no  dis- 
cordant note,  or  errant  cadence,  his  eyes  flashed  fire,  his 
lips  moved  with  inarticulate  emotion,  and  he  clutched  several 
times  the  knee  of  the  colleague  at  his  side,  in  nervous  ecstacy 
of  satisfaction  or  energy  of  approval. 

One  passage  in  the  speech  no  one  who  heard  it,  can  ever 


AN    AMERICAN    LADY'S    ESTIMATE    OF    GLADSTONE.        373 

forget,  nor  can  anyone  forget  the  revelation  it  afforded  of 
the  real  vivacity  of  Gladstone,  when  totally  released  from 
official  conventionality.  Russell  had  in  his  closed  hand 
passages  from  the  utterances  of  the  Irish  opponents  of  the 
dtestablishment  bill.  In  a  few  sentences  he  recalled  the 
period,  the  nature  and  object  of  the  measure,  and  the  heat 
which  it  engendered  in  Ulster.  But  he  mis-stated  the  year, 
and  was  promptly  corrected  by  Gladstone.  Then  he  pre- 
pared to  read  the  extracts.  Of  course,  in  America  they  are 
perfectly  familiar  to  all  who  remember  the  affair — and  I 
must  add  that  they  remember  these  British  affairs  much  better 
in  America,  than  they  are  remembered  here,  where  people 
eat  and  sleep  much  more  than  we,  and  read  much  less.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  every  word  uttered  in  '68  and 
'69,  over  the  proposal  of  disestablishment  has  been  repeated 
over  the  proposal  of  home  rule.  The  oracle  has  been  worked 
to  speak  the  same  dire  prophecies  of  religious  strife,  civil 
war,  destruction  of  trade,  departure  of  capital,  disruption  of 
the  empire,  and  final  menace  in  all  the  categories  of  woe 
and  ruin,  whenever  a  wrong  in  Ireland  is  to  be  redressed— 
separation.  There  were  then  the  same  vaporings  on  the 
platforms,  the  same  imprecations  on  the  Orange  altars,  the 
same  appeals  to  base  traditions,  the  same  inflammation  of  the 
vicious  in  human  nature.  Of  course  the  bigot  who  was  go- 
ing to  raise  the  standard  of  revolt,  if  the  alien  church  were 
lifted  off  the  necks  of  those  who  would  not  go  upon  their 
knees  in  it,  has  been  vowing  he  would  do  exactly  the  same 
thing,  if  the  Home  Rule  bill  should  pass;  and  the  extracts 
Russell  held  in  his  hands  were  addresses  proffering  self- 
immolation.  He  read  them  exquisitely.  They  reeked  with 
carnage.  Every  second  word  was  ' '  die.  "  The  least  over- 
doing in  the  reading  would  have  spoiled  the  dramatic  effect, 
and  there  was  more  danger  of  overstepping  the  bounds  than 
of  not  imbuing  the  rendering  with  sufficient  drollery.  The 
whole  house  went  into  continuous  roars  of  laughter. 


374  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"We  shall  die, "  he  said,  with  lofty  pathos  tinged  with  a 
ray  of  indescribable  comedy,  "as  our  fathers  died  before 
us.  We  shall  die,  "  and  his  pitch  rose  and  his  voice  became 
charged  with  faint  tremelo,  "as  our  sons  shall  die  after  us! 
We  swear  it,  and  our  vows  shall  be  heard  from  earth*to 
heaven,  and  from  one  end  of  Ulster  to  the  other."  The 
anti-climax  was  given  amid  volleys  of  laughter,  which  pealed 
and  pealed  until  the  house  could  laugh  no  more;  and  the 
sonorous  voice  of  the  prime  minister,  laughing  above  all  the 
rest,  continued  to  be  heard  while  his  supple  body  was  al- 
most doubled.  He  threw  his  head  back  upon  the  bench  ami 
laughed,  while  tears  of  merriment  bedewed  his  face.  It 
may  be  true,  as  said  by  the  author  of  "Obiter  Dicta, "  that 
the  death  of  Beaconsfield  eclipsed  the  gayety  of  politics  and 
banished  epigram  from  parliament.  But  the  scene  created 
by  Charles  Russell,  and  in  which  the  greatest  of  prime 
ministers  was  a  conspicuous  participant,  proved  that  at  least 
the  capacity  for  enjoying  gayety,  if  not  for  producing 
epigram,  still  lives  in  parliament. 

I  have  watched  Gladstone  carefully  through  many 
speeches,  some  obviously  prepared  in  part,  some  born  wholly 
of  the  moment  of  their  delivery.  He  stands  at  ease,  rest- 
ing one  side  against  the  edge  of  the  table,  which  is  high 
enough  to  afford  some  sense  of  repose.  The  nervousness 
in  his  fingers  causes  him  to  clutch  something,  and  toy  with 
it — papers,  books,  pens.  He  never  strikes  attitudes,  never 
mouths  or  makes  grimmaces  or  smirks,  or  by  paltry  devices 
of  throat  or  eyes  or  hands,  distracts  his  hearers  by  his  levity 
from  his  poverty  of  matter.  He  is  simple,  natural,  and 
clear  voiced,  but  the  voice  is  not  as  full  or  far-carrying  as 
it  used  to  be.  He  rarely  gesticulates  except  with  brief  waves 
of  the  hands.  One  might  almost  describe  his  physical 
characteristics  when  speaking  at  the  table  as  monotonous. 
There  is  a  tempered  and  regulated  variety  in  it  nevertheless. 
There  are  impassioned  passages  in  all  his  momentous 


AN    AMERICAN    LADY'S    ESTIMATE    OF    GLADSTONE.        375 

speeches,  which  must  have  carried  him  away  from  himself; 
and  during  this  debate,  albeit  wariness  and  tact  have  been 
controlling  ideas  on  his  side  of  the  combat,  rather  than 
valor  and  defiance,  he  has  sometimes  permitted  himself  to 
become  vehement. 

Of  course  there  will  be  differences  of  criticism  upon  this. 
To  many  of  her  friends,  Kathleen  O'Meara  tells  us,  Mme. 
Mohl  was  "that  charming  old  lady;"  to  some  she  was  "  that 
ugly  old  woman."  The  admirers  of  Mr.  Gladstone  would 
describe  his  energy  in  speaking  as  vehemence;  his  oppo- 
nents belittle  it  into  peevishness.  But  it  is,  upon  the  whole, 
a  manly,  rugged,  simple,  composed  style,  dignified,  ele- 
vated, sufficiently  diversified,  to  be  always  absorbing  and 
varied  enough  in  degrees  of  power,  to  be  always  fascinating. 
He  reminds  one  of  Ruskin's  Jura  rock,  which,  "  balanced 
between  chalk  and  marble,  weathers  indeed  into  curious 
rifts  and  furrows,  but  rarely  breaks  loose,  and  has  long  ago 
clothed  itself  either  with  forest  flowers  or  with  sweet  short 
grass  and  all  blossoms  that  love  sunshine."  The  form  in 
which  Mr.  Gladstone  vests  his  thoughts  is  precisely  of  this 
sort.  He  seeks  genial  tone  in  his  voice,  is  fond  of  upward 
inflection,  is  finely  polite  and  guarded  in  personality,  never 
is  uncouth  or  irritating,  even  when  he  holds  the  sword  above 
jis  enemy's  head;  and  all  along  the  path  of  speaking,  one 
finds  kindness,  urbanity  and  suave  phrases — "  sweet  grass. " 
That  is  in  a  formal  speech.  He  was  brutal  beyond  under- 
standing now,  when  amid  volleys  of  combined  Liberal  and 
Tory  cheers,  he  announced  that  he  had  put  Parnell  and  the 
other  home  rulers  in  Kilmainham  jail.  In  his  younger  days 
he  resorted,  as  the  text  of  his  speeches  shows,  with  alacrity 
and  daring,  to  feats  of  discussion,  and  freely  employed 
invective  and  vituperation.  Now  he  deprecates.  Where 
formerly  he  seized  the  foil,  now  he  seeks  to  disarm.  In 
youth  he  eagerly  hurried  into  violent  games  and  sports  of 
parliamentary  competition.  In  age,  he  is  still  combative 


376  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

but  he  lets  his  adversary  rush  upon  him,  while  he  rests  and 
defends. 

His  speeches  lose  somewhat  in  esteem  if  read  or  heard 
apart  from  the  contingencies  which  they  were  made  to  fit  or 
to  overcome.  They  are  not  even  and  pellucid,  like  silent 
brooks,  or  violently  superb  like  glorious  torrents.  They  are 
uneven.  Admirable  sentiments  worthily  framed  abound  in 
them.  But  they  are  in  spots  rough,  in  spots  obscure,  in 
spots  involved.  They  are  free  from  fustian  and  from 
turgidity.  They  are  indeed  of  the  nature  of  oratorical  gym- 
nastics, in  which  dexterity,  skill,  and  the  avoidence  of  danger, 
while  always  in  danger,  are  the  most  obvious  elements. 
There  is  not  a  line  of  brutality  in  them;  and  considering  the 
length  of  his  public  life,  the  brutish'ness  of  his  enemies,  his 
own  flexible  temper,  and  the  stupidity  and  maliciousness  of 
toryism,  this  must  be  considered  very  remarkable,  and  a, 
singular  evidence  of  what  we  may  call  intellectual  fine 
breeding. 

What  a  range  his  industry  and  oratory  have  covered! 
Aside  from  the  sublime  political  ideas  upon  which  he  has 
left  an  impress  to  last  until  liberty  itself  perishes,  the  list  of 
minor  practical  things  which  he  mended  for  the  country,  is 
curious  and  long.  It  was  he  who  scrutinized  the  relative 
values  of  1, 200  duty-paying  articles,  and  abolished  or  lowered 
the  duty  on  750  of  them,  before  he  passed  from  the  theory 
of  protection  to  that  of  free  trade.  He  devised  ingenious 
weapons  with  which  to  open  the  doors  of  parliament  to  the 
Jews  and  destroy  the  ancient  injustice  which  ignorance 
cherished  against  them.  With  the  airiness  of  an  acrobat,  he 
overthrew  a  Derby  ministry  on  a  budget.  He  has  manipu- 
lated budgets  like  an  expert  in  legerdemain,  and  embellished 
with  oratory  the  taxation  of  spirits,  the  interests  of  cafy 
drivers  and  hackney  coachmen,  the  destinies  of  butter, 
cheese,  oranges,  currants,  hops,  timber  and  tallow.  It  was 
he  who  brought  in  the  postoffice  savings  bank  scheme,  He 


AN    AMERICAN    LADY'S    ESTIMATE    OF    GLADSTONE.       377 

was  foster  father  of  half-penny  post-cards  and  half-penny 
postages  for  newspapers.  He  has  written  many  amendments 
of  the  laws  affecting  bankruptcy  and  patents,  and  there  is 
scarcely  a  division  or  interest  in  commerce  which  has  not 
been  explored  by  his  penetrating  faculties  and  relieved  of 
burdens  or  restraints.  The  great  measures  with  which  he 
is  immortally  identified,  constitute  the  imperishable  founda- 
tions of  his  fame.  The  treaty  of  Washington,  the  insertion 
of  the  principle  of  arbitration  into  international  disputations, 
as  a  mode  and  means  of  settlement,  in  lieu  of  intrigue, 
bribery  or  war;  the  disestablishment  bill,  the  education  acts 
and  the  university  test  bills,  the  abolition  of  purchase  in  the 
army,  are  among  his  high  doings.  The  legislation,  still 
higher  and  broader,  the  leveling-up  laws,  the  laws  affecting 
suffrage  and  land,  constitute  his  higher  claim  upon  the  ad- 
miration and  wonder  of  his  age,  and  will  arouse  veneration 
in  all  ages  to  follow. 

There  is  something  soothing  and  satisfactory  in  discover- 
ing that  a  man  who  has  wrought  these  things  against  British 
grain,  is  a  man  whose  wisdom  was  learned  in  the  school  of 
experience,  and  who  had  to  take  punishment  like  others. 
He  has  not  hesitated  to  confess  error,  and  what  is  nobler 
still,  to  avow  that  out  of  its  consequences  he  acquired  truth. 
He  has  atoned  for  his  misapprehension  of  the  causes  and  ob- 
jects of  the  American  civil  war.  He  abandoned  toryism  and 
cast  off  what  seemed  to  him  an  economic  theory,  unsuited  to 
a  great  community,  having  to  exchange  manufactures  for  food. 
He  assailed  the  religious  predilections  of  a  portion  of  his 
fellow-men,  and  Mr.  Chamberlain,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter, 
tormented  him  a  little  with  that  in  debate,  but  he  has 
atoned  for  it  by  removing  barriers  against  them  in  the  high 
roads.  He  tortured  Ireland.  He  is  atoning  for  that  to-day, 
not  by  offering  her  compensation  for  the  past,  it  is  true,  for 
that  is  beyond  the  power  of  any  man,  or  of  the  empire  it- 


378  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

self,  or  of  time  itself,  but  by  opening  before  her  weary  and 
longing  eyes,  a  prospect  of  some  sort  of  brighter  future. 

He  takes  the  defeat  of  his  measure  deeply  to  heart.  I 
began  this  article  with  the  intent  of  describing  the  effect  up- 
on him  of  the  confirmed  news  of  Mr.  Chamberlain's  betrayal. 
The  charm  of  the  subject  has  carried  me  even  beyond  the 
commission  with  which  I  was  entrusted  by  the  Sun — to 
describe  the  man,  his  manner,  and  his  individuality  in  par- 
liament. No  one  who  sees  him  now  can  doubt  that  he  is 
enduring  keenly,  but  intrepidly,  a  wound  inflicted  by  a  hand 
which  he  clasped  to  lift  the  man  belonging  to  it,  into  honor, 
Well  may  he  apply  to  Mr.  Chamberlain  the  words  of 
Agamemnon  to  Ulysses:  "Accomplished  in  evil  wiles,  and 
crafty-minded,  thou  wert  the  first  invited  by  me  to  the  feast; 
then  it  was  pleasant  to  thee  to  eat  the  roasted  meats  and  quaff 
the  wine.  "  Following  the  example  of  Agamemnon,  he 
neither  chides  the  deserter  nor  exhorts  him.  '  *  We  shall 
settle  these  disputes  at  a  future  time,  "  and  the  settlement  is 
a  foregone  conclusion.  No  one  doubts  that  an  overwhelming 
liberal  majority  will  confirm  the  great  minister's  determina- 
tion to  plant  the  germ  of  home  rule  in  Ireland. 

It  has  been  the  happy  fortune  of  great  British  politicians 
to  have  wives  who  aided  them  in  bearing  the  cares  of  office, 
and  made  their  private  existence  blessed.  No  more  to  Pitt 
was  the  accomplished  companion  of  his  labors,  or  to  Fox  the 
lovely  being  who  exercised  her  spell  upon  him  to  the  last, 
than  is  the  wife  of  the  great  minister  to  his  honored  and 
glorious  age.  Mrs.  Gladstone  is  no  longer  a  rare  visitor  to 
the  House  of  Commons.  She  is  a  tall,  distinguished  looking 
woman,  following  her  husband  "in  the  silvered  gray  of 
years,  "  but  at  his  side  always,  either  in  literal  truth  or  in 
the  closest  sympathy.  Her  face  is  strong,  keen  and  refined. 
A  forehead  high,  rather  than  broad;  full,  bright  eyes,  rich 
with  feeling;  a  long,  straight  nose,  high  at  its  joining  with 
the  forehead;  a  sympathetic  mouth;  a  clear,  sonorous  voice; 


AN    AMERICAN    LADY'S    ESTIMATE    OF    GLADSTONE.        379 

a  simple,  stately  manner,  gracious  and  womanly;  a  style  of 
dress  suited  to  her  age  and  station — such  are  her  exterior 
characteristics.  Who  does  not  rejoice  that  she  has  lived  to 
behold  the  laurels  on  her  husband's  head,  and  that  he  has  her 
to  walk  with  him  to  the  not  distant  end?  It  was  my 
privilege  to  express  to  her  the  admiration  with  which  in  our 
own  country  his  efforts  for  the  betterment  of  men  and  gov- 
ernment are  observed,  and  her  responses  showed  that  she,  as 
well  as  he,  finds  in  this  vaster  sympathy  a  deep  happiness. 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 

MISCELLANEOUS  :    SKETCHES,    LETTERS,     ANECDOTES. 

There  is  nothing  insignificant — nothing. — Lord  Chesterfield. 

It  is  a  shameful  thing  to  be  weary  of  enquiry  when  what  we 
search  for  is  excellent. — Cicero. 

He  that  studies  books  alone  will  know  how  things  ought  to  be  ; 
and  he  who  studies  men,  will  know  how  things  are. — John  Colton. 

MR.  GLADSTONE'S  PICTURE  or  HIS  FATHER. 

I  will  not  dwell  at  length  upon  the  personal  portraiture 
of  my  father.  I  may  presume  perhaps  to  say  this; 
that  while  it  is  only  for  the  world  to  look  upon  him  mainly 
in  the  light  of  an  active  and  successful  merchant,  who,  like 
many  merchants  of  the  country,  distinguished  himself  by 
an  energetic  philanthropy,  so  far  as  his  children  are  con- 
cerned, when  they  think  of  him  they  can  remember  nothing 
except  his  extraordinary  claims  upon  their  profound  grati- 
tude and  affection.  *  *  *  His  eye  was  not  dim,  nor 
his  natural  force  abated.  He  was  full  of  bodily  and  mental 
vigor.  Whatsoever  his  hand  found  to  do,  he  did  it  with  his 
might.  He  could  not  understand  or  tolerate  those  who, 
perceiving  an  object  to  be  good,  did  not  at  once  actively 
pursue  it.  With  all  this  energy  he  joined  a  corresponding 
warmth  and  so  to  speak,  eagerness  of  affection,  a  keen  ap- 
preciation of  humor,  in  which  he  found  a  rest,  and  an  inde- 
scribable frankness  and  simplicity  of  character,  which, 
crowning  his  own  qualities,  made  him,  I  think  (and  I  strive 
to  think  impartially),  nearly,  or  quite,  the  most  interesting 
old  man  I  have  ever  known. 


MISCELLANEOUS:  SKETCHES,  LETTERS,  ANECDOTES.     381 

MR.  GLADSTONE'S  LETTER  TO  PRINCE  VICTOR,  DUKE  OF 
CLARENCE. 

The  following  letter  written  by  Mr.  Gladstone  to  Prince 
Victor  on  his  attainment  of  his  majority  is  doubly  interest- 
ing seeing  that  Prince  and  Statesman  have  both  passed  into 
the  silent  land: 

HAWARDEN  CASTLE,  January  7,  1885. 

SIR — As  the  oldest  among  the  confidential  servants  of  Her  Majesty, 
I  cannot  allow  the  anniversary  to  pass  without  a  notice  which  will 
tomorrow  bring1  your  Royal  Highness  to  full  age;  and  thus  mark  an 
important  epoch  in  your  life.  The  hopes  and  intentions  of  those 
whose  lives  lie,  like  mine,  in  the  past,  are  of  little  moment;  but  they 
have  seen  much,  and  what 'they  have  seen  suggests  much  for  the  future. 
There  lies  before  your  Royal  Highness  in  prospect  the  occupation,  I 
trust,  at  a  distant  date,  of  a  throne,  which  to  me  at  least,  appears 
ihe  most  illustrious  in  the  world,  from  its  history  and  associations, 
from  its  legal  basis,  from  the  weight  of  the  cares  it  brings,  from  the 
loyal  love  of  the  people,  and  from  the  unparalleled  opportunities  it 
gives,  in  so  many  ways  and  in  so  many  regions,  of  doing  good  to  the 
almost  countless  numbers  whom  the  Almighty  has  placed  beneath  the 
sceptre  of  England. 

I  fervently  desire  and  pray,  and  there  cannot  be  a  more  animat- 
ing prayer,  that  your  Royal  Highness  may  ever  grow  in  the  principles 
of  conduct,  and  may  be  adorned  with  all  the  qualities,  which  corre- 
spond with  this  great  and  nobble  vocation. 

And,  sir,  if  the  sovereignty  has  been  relieved  by  our  modern  insti- 
tutions of  some  of  its  burdens,  it  still,  I  believe,  remains  true  that 
there  has  been  no  period  of  the  world's  history  at  which  successors  to 
monarchy  could  more  efficaciously  contribute  to  the  stability  of  a 
great  historic  system,  dependent  even  more  upon  love  than  upon 
strength,  by  devotion  to-  their  duties,  and  by  a  bright  example  to  the 
country.  This  result  we  have  happily  been  permitted  to  see,  and 
other  generations  will,  I  trust,  witness  it  anew. 

Heartily  desiring  that  in  the  life  of  your  Royal  Highness  every 
private  and  personal  may  be  joined  with  every  public  blessing,  I  have 
the  honor  to  remain,  sir, 

Your  Rovdl  Highness's  most  dutiful  and  faithful  servant, 

W.  E.  GLADSTONE. 


GRANDPA  GLADSTONE  AND  DOROTHY  DREW. 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE.  383 

AD  DOROTHEAM. 

We  are  not  accustomed  to  think  of  Mr.  Gladstone  as  a  poet.  But 
this  poem,  addressed  to  his  granddaughter,  Dorothy  Drew,  on  the 
Golden  Wedding  Day,  we  are  sure  will  be  most  heartily  welcomed  by 
all  our  readers : 

I  know  where  there  is  honey  in  a  jar, 

Meet  for  a  certain  little  friend  of  mine ; 
And,  Dorothy,  I  know  where  Daisies  are 

That  only  wait  small  hands  to  intertwine 

A  wreath  for  such  a  golden  head  as  thine. 
The  thought  that  thou  art  coming  makes  all  glad  ; 

The  house  is  bright  with  blossoms  high  and  low, 
And  many  a  little  lass  and  little  lad 

Expectantly  are  running  to  and  fro  ; 

The  fire  within  our  hearts  is  all  aglow. 
We  want  thee,  child,  to  share  in  our  delight 

On  this  high  day,  the  holiest  and  best, 
Because  'twas  then,  ere  youth  had  taken  flight, 

Thy  grandmamma,  of  women  loveliest, 

Made  me  of  men  most  honored  and  most  blest. 
That  naughty  boy  who  led  thee  to  suppose 

He  was  thy  sweetheart  has,  I  grieve  to  tell, 
Been  seen  to  pick  the  garden's  choicest  rose 

And  toddle  with  it  to  another  belle, 

Who  does  not  treat  him  altogether  well. 
But  mind  not  that,  or  let  it  teach  thee  this — 

To  waste  no  love  on  any  youthful  rover 
(All  youths  are  rovers,  I  assure  thee,  Miss), 

No,  if  thou  wouldst  true  constancy  discover, 

Thy  grandpapa  is  perfect  as  a  lover. 
So  come,  thou  playmate  of  my  closing  day, 

The  latest  treasure  life  can  offer  me, 
And  with  thy  baby  laughing  make  us  gay. 

Thy  fresh  young  voice  shall  sing,  my  Dorothy, 

Songs  that  shall  bid  the  feet  of  sorrow  flee. 

MR.  GLADSTONE'S  GKAND  PERORATION  :   ' '  TIME  is  ON  OUR  SIDE  !" 

You  cannot  fight  against  the  future.  Time  is  on  our 
side  !  The  great  social  forces  which  move  onward  in  their 
might  and  majesty,  and  which  the  tumult  of  our  debate > 
does  not  for  a  moment  impede  or  disturb — those  great  so- 


384  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

cial  forces  are  against  you.  They  are  marshalled  on  cur 
side ;  and  the  banner  which  we  now  carry  in  this  fight, 
though  perhaps  at  some  moment  it  may  droop  over  our  sink- 
ing heads,  yet  it  soon  again  will  float  in  the  eye  of  Heaven, 
and  will  be  borne  by  the  firm  hands  of  the  united  people 
of  the  three  kingdoms,  perhaps  not  to  an  easy,  but  to  a  cer- 
tain and  a  not  far  distant  victory. 

MRS.  HENRY  WARD  BEECHER  HEARS  GLADSTONE. 

We  remained  in  Liverpool  until  Monday  evening,  to  hear 
Mr.  Gladstone's  speech,  and,  accordingly,  two  hours  before 
the  meeting  was  to  open,  we  started  for  the  large  hall  where 
the  "Grand  Old  Man"  was  to  address  the  populace.  Even 
at  that  early  hour  we  found  entrance  very  difficult.  As  Mr. 
Beecher's  ticket  placed  him  on  the  platform,  we  parted 
company  at  the  door,  and  committing  us  to  the  care  of 
Major  Pond,  he  left  with  no  fear  that  with  such  a  stalwart 
attendant  we  should  have  any  difficulty  in  reaching  the  seats 
our  tickets  called  for.  But  at  the  first  step  we  were 
hemmed  in  by  a  crowd  such  as  we  never  met  before.  Every 
one  has  read  and  heard  of  the  densely  packed  English 
crowds  which  can  be  gathered  on  special  occasions,  and  of 
the  compact  and  irresistible  power  which  an  English  mob 
can  show.  We  thought  we  knew  something  of  its  meaning. 
But  our  poor  gifts  at  description  utterly  fail  us  here. 
Heaven  defend  us  from  being  ever  so  closely  wedged  in 
again  !  No  room  to  take  one  step  ;  packed  so  crushingly 
that  the  chest  had  not  room  to  expand  sufficiently  to  enable 
us  to  draw  one  full  breath.  But  the  crowd  behind  pressed 
with  ever-increasing  power  on  those  who  were  held  immov- 
able in  front,  and,  inch  by  inch,  bore  them  forward,  utterly 
powerless  to  resist.  It  was  well  for  all  that  the  packing  was 
so  effectually  done  that  there  was  no  room  to  fall,  or  hun- 
dreds must  have  been  crushed  to  death.  Once  inside  the 
building,  there  was  no  escape ;  it  was  just  as  impos- 
sible to  return  as  to  go  forward.  At  last  the  surging 


MISCELLANEOUS:  SKETCHES.  LETTERS,  ANECDOTES.     385 

mass  of  human  beings  became  partially  station- 
tionary.  There  was  no  longer  room  to  move;  insistence  was 
in  vain.  Then,  one  by  one,  those  who  were  to  occupy  the 
platform  emerged  from  their  well-guarded  waiting  room 
and  came  on  to  the  platform.  With  each  fresh  arrival  that 
huge  assembly  broke  out  into  cheers  and  shouts.  We  had 
just  passed  the  ordeal  of  a  British  crowd;  now  we  were  to 
learn  the  strength  and  endurance  of  British  lungs.  We 
have,  in  our  days,  heard  some  cheering  and  shouting  in 
America,  but  we  must  humbly  yield  the  palm  in  this  parti- 
cular to  our  brethren  across  the  water.  We  have  certainly 
at  least  seen  and  heard  all  that  can  be  accomplished  in  an 
enthusiastic  English  gathering.  If  actuated  by  angry,  dis- 
cordant passions,  how  fearful  must  have  been  the  results  ! 

Promptly  at  the  appointed  hour  Mr.  Gladstone  entered. 
Mistaken  mortals,  to  suppose  that  we  had  heard  all  that  an 
enthusiastic  English  audience  could  accomplish !  Words 
fail  in  describing  the  scene.  The  immense  crowd  arose 
tumultuously.  Those  wedged  into  their  proper  places  by 
the  pressure  managed  to  struggle  to  their  feet,  and  in  the 
selfish  enthusiasm  of  the  moment,  hoping  to  catch  a  full 
view  of  the  grand  old  man,  mounted  onto  the  seats,  thus 
preventing  all  back  of  them  from  seeing  anything.  Then 
shout  after  shout,  cheer  after  cheer,  rose  louder  and  louder; 
hats;  umbrellas,  handkerchiefs,  and  even  the  coats  of  the 
men  were  shaken  overhead  ;  the  stamping  of  feet  and  canes 
was  deafening  ;  anything,  everything  was  resorted  to,  that 
could  increase  the  volume  of  sound,  until  one  almost  feared 
the  walls  of  that  tremendous  hall  must  crack  and  demolish 
the  building. 

When  at  last  the  tumult  partially  ceased,  we  think  from 
sheer  lack  of  strength  to  continue  it,  Mr.  Gladstone,  who 
had  stood  bowing  to  the  worshiping  multitude  which  sur- 
rounded him,  began  to  speak.  Although  constantly  inter- 
rupted by  "Hear!  Hear  !"  and  other  assenting  exclama- 


386  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

• 

tions,  he  went  on  without  showing  the  least  annoyance  from 
these  ejaculations,  which  seemed  sufficient  to  distract  all 
connected  thought  from  his  subject.  That,  to  be  sure,  was 
one  to  which  he  wTas  giving  his  whole  soul.  The  papers 
furnish  but  a  meagre  idea  of  its  strength  and  eloquence.  It 
would  be  the  height  of  folly  to  attempt  even  the  faintest 
description.  No  such  sublime  rhetoric  and  eloquence  can  be 
described  by  pen;  it  must  be  heard  to  be  understood  and 
appreciated.  England  should  listen  to  his  appeal  and  bow 
with  deference  to  his  wonderful  power. 

MR.    GLADSTONE  WRITES  A  LETTER  TO  A  BIBLE  CLASS. 

Writing  some  years  ago  to  a  Manchester  gentleman  who 
had  charge  of  a  men's  Bible  class,  Mr.  Gladstone  said  : 

"Two  things  especially  I  commend  to  your  thoughts.  The 
first  is  this :  Christianit}?"  is  Christ,  and  nearness  to  Him 
and  to  His  image  is  the  end  of  all  your  efforts.  Thus  the 
Gospels  which  continually  present  to  us  one  pattern,  have  a 
kind  of  precedence  among  the  books  of  Holy  Scripture.  I 
advise  your  remembering  that  the  Scriptures  have  two  pur- 
poses— one  to  feed  the  people  of  God  in  green  pastures ; 
the  other  to  serve  for  proof  of  doctrine.  These  are  not 
divided  by  a  sharp  line  from  one  another,  yet  they  are 
provinces  on  the  whole,  distinct,  and  in  some  Avays  different. 
We  are  variously  called  to  various  works.  But  we  all  re- 
quire to  feed  in  the  pastures  and  drink  at  the  wells.  For 
this  purpose  the  Scriptures  are  incomparably  simple  to  all 
those  willing  to  be  fed.  The  same  cannot  be  said  in  regard 
to  the  proof  or  construction  of  doctrine.  This  is  a  desir- 
able work,  but  not  fo'r  us  all.  It  requires  to  be  pursued 
with  more  of  external  helps,  more  learning,  and  goo  I 
guides,  more  knowledge  of  the  historical  development  of 
our  religion,  which  development  is  one  of  the  most  wonder- 
ful parts  of  all  human  history,  and  in  my  opinion,  affords 
also  one  of  the  strongest  demonstrations  of  its  truth,  and 
of  the  power  and  goodness  of  God." 


FAC-SIMILE   OF   A  POSTAL   CARD        387 

FROM    MR.   GLADSTONE. 

When  the  English  Post-Office  department — now  more 
than  thirty  years  ago,  issued  the  useful  and  economic  postal 
card,  Mr.  Gladstone  availed  himself  to  a  very  large  extent  of 
this  easy  method  of  communication,  and  with  his  own  hand 
answered  on  postal  cards  the  letters  of  innumerable  corre- 


UNJON    POSTALE    UNIYERSELLE, 

GREAT  BRITAIN  &  IRELAN 
GRANDE  BRETAGNE  ET  IRL 


Cfaucfrv 


spondents.  We  are  glad  to  be  able  to  present  to  our  readers 
an  example  of  one  of  these  interesting  documents.  Eleven 
years  ago,  the  Rev.  George  C.  Lorimer,  LL.  D.,  now  of 
Tremont  Temple,  Boston,  then  of  Immanuel  Church,  Chi- 
cago, forwarded  to  Mr.  Gladstone  at  Hawarden  a  copy  of 
"Studies  in  Social  Life,"  and  other  works  of  his  masterly 
and  industrious  pen,  together  with  a  letter  expressive  of  the 
wide  spread  sentiment  in  America  of  approval  of  Mr.  Glad- 


388 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 


stone's  Home  Rule  policy  for  Ireland.  In  reply  Mr.  Glad- 
stone sent  the  following  courteous  note,  dated  Hawarden, 
January  6th,  1887: 


FAC-SIMILE  OF  POSTAL  CARD,  REVERSE  SIDE. 

SIR — I  thank  you  very  much  for  the  works  so  kindly  sent 
which  I  shall  examine  with  much  interest,  and  I  also  accept  your 
letter  with  pleasure  as  a  new  token  of  the  strong  and  general 
feeling  prevailing  in  America  for  that  just  and  liberal  policy 
toward  Ireland,  which  will,  be  so  conducive  to  the  advantage  and 
happiness  of  Great  Britain. 

Your  very  faithful  and  obed't, 

HAWABDEN,  Jan.  6,  '87.  W.  E.  GLADSTONE. 


MISCELLANEOUS:  SKETCHES,  LETTERS,  ANECDOTES.     389 

MB.  GLADSTONE'S  LOVE  OF  MUSIC. 
Mr.  George  M.  Towle,  who  knew  him  well,  says : 
* '  He  is  an  accomplished  player  on  the  piano,  which  time 
and  again,  proved  a  soothing  solace  to  his  restless  and  over- 
worked brain.  His  voice,  the  most  musical  voice  heard 
within  the  walls  of  Parliament,  was  also  singularly  sweet 
and  powerful,  when,  as  he  loved  to  do,  he  blended  it  with 
the  harmonies  of  his  favorite  instrument.  It  is  said  that 
when  he  was  Prime  Minister,  he  was  wont,  after  some  late 
and  exciting  debate,  to  return  to  his  house  in  Carlton  Gar- 
dens in  the  small  hours  of  the  morning,  sit  down  at  his 
Erard,  and  play  a  recent  ballad,  or  a  sacred  hymn,  suited  to 
restore  repose  to  his  feelings  of  the  moment.  He  was  more 
fond  of  sacred  and  ballad  music,  Scotch  airs,  and  the  plain- 
tive melodies  of  his  old  friend  Moore,  than  of  the  more 
fashionable  compositions  of  the  German  masters. 

Among  his  favorite  hymns  was  that  impressive  hymn, 
which  was  hymn  and  prayer  in  one,  the  delightful  ' '  Lux 
Benigna,"  by  the  friend  of  his  earlier  years,  Cardinal  New- 
man : 

Lead,  Kindly  Light,  amid  the  encircling  gloom ; 

Lead  Thou  me  on! 
The  night  is  dark,  and  I  am  far  from  nome  ; 

Lead  Thou  me  on! 

Keep  Thou  my  feet,  I  do  not  ask  to  see 
The  distant  scene — one  step's  enough  for  me. 

I  was  not  ever  thus,  nor  prayed  that  Thou 

Shouldst  lead  me  on. 
I  loved  to  choose  and  see  my  path,  but  now 

Lead  Thou  me  on! 

I  loved  the  garish  day,  and  spite  of  fears, 
Pride  ruled  my  will.     Remember  not  past  years. 

So  long  Thy  power  hath  blessed  me,  sure  it  still 

Will  lead  me  on 
O'er  moor  and  fen,  o'er  crag  and  torrent,  till 

The  night  is  gone  ; 

And  with  the  morn  those  angel  faces  smile 
Which  I  have  loved  long  since,  and  lost  awhile. 


390  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"Rock  of  Ages,"  was  very  dear  to  him.  It  was  the  last 
hymn  he  sang.  It  was  sang  in  Westminster  Abbey  on  the 
occasion  of  his  funeral  : 

Rock  of  ages!    cleft  for  me, 

Let  me  hide  myself  in  Thee  ; 

Let  the  water  and  the  blood, 

From  thy  wounded  side  which  flowed, 

Be  of  sin  the  double  cure, 

Save  from  wrath  and  make  me  pure. 

Could  my  tears  forever  flow, 
Could  my  zeal  no  languor  know, 
These  for  sin  could  not  atone. 
Thou  must  save,  and  Thou  alone. 
In  my  hand  no  price  I  bring  ; 
Simply  to  Thy  cross  I  cling. 

While  I  draw  this  fleeting  breath, 
When  my  eyes  shall  close  in  death, 
When  I  rise  to  world's  unknown, 
And  behold  Thee  on  Thy  throne, 
Rock  of  ages,  cleft  for  me, 
Let  me  hide  myself  in  Thee. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

MR.    GLADSTONE    AS    AN    ORATOR. 

His  enthusiasm  kindles  as  he  advances;  and  when  he  arrives  at  his 

peroration  it  is  in  full  blaze. — Edmund  Burke. 

Of  piercing  wit  and  pregnant  thought, 

Endowed  by  nature,  and  by  learning  taught 

To  move  assemblies.  — John  Dryden. 

O  thou  who  pinest  for  the  truth  to  grow 

In  weedy  waste  or  on  the  steppes'  wan  snow, 

Who  criest  out  -thine  anguish,  moaning  low, 

While  Time  pours  from  his  urn  the  years  in  even  flow, 
Be  comforted;  the  season  waits  aspace, 

As  one,  ere  weighted  words,  scans  the  unconscious  face 

Till  o'er  it,  like  some  pattern  of  rare  lace, 

The  soul's  responsive,  mystic  legends  race. 

All  things  sweep  round  to  him  who  waits, 

Holding  his  breath  in  agony, 

Or  calmly  gazing  toward  eternity, — 

Life's  lessening  thread,  the  open  shears,  the  Fates 

Grown  sweet  to  the  palled  vision, — yet  though  late  it  seems  most  late, 

Truth's  time  must  surely  come  to  those  who,  trusting,  wait. 

— Elizabeth  King. 

Many  writers  from  varying  standpoints  have  discoursed 
with  greater  enthusiasm  on  Mr.  Gladstone's  marvelous 
oratorical  powers.  We  have  already  quoted  from  the  gifted 
pen  of  Wm.  Justin  McCarthy  on  this  subject.  But  the 
most  exhaustive  analytical  discussion  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
oratory  comes  from  the  late  Professor  Minto,  whose  literary 
gifts  adorned  and  strengthened  the  columns  of  the  London 
Daily  News  for  so  many  years.  We  here  present  the  Pro- 
fessor's judgment  of  the  great  statesman's  oratory. 

All  are  agreed  that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  one  of  the  first 
orators  of  his  time.  The  bitterest  anti-Gladstonian  cannot 
deny  this.  It  was  admitted  at  least  forty  years  ago,  and 

391 


392 


LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 


can  hardly  be  challenged  now,  when  like  some  mighty  tree 
that  has  survived  its  original  fellows,  and  year  by  year  with 
unarrested  growth  has  increased  in  bulk  and  height,  he  tow- 
ers above  the  surrounding  forest.  His  companions  in  the 
political  world  now  might  say  of  him  what  Casca  —  the  en- 
vious Casca — said  of  Caesar — 

"  Why,  man,  he  doth  bestride  the  narrow  world 
Like  a  Colossus,  and  we,  petty  men 
Walk  under  his  huge  legs." 

If  the  test  of  great  oratory  is  the  power  of  producing  con- 
viction, then  Mr.  Gladstone  was  not  merely  one  of  the  first 
orators  of  his  time,  but  one  of  the  greatest  in  all  time.  If 
we  are  to  be  exact,  let  us  limit  ourselves  to  the  oratory  of 
statesmen,  and  take  into  account  difficulty  of  task  and  length 
of  opportunity  apart  from  which  it  is  impossible  to  obtain 
any  measure  of  natural  power.  Who  will  not,  then,  admit 
that  probably  no  man  that  ever  lived  has  produced  convic- 
tion in  so  many  minds  on  so  many  questions  of  State  in  the 
teeth  of  equally  strong  instincts  and  interests  championed 
by  brilliant  and  eloquent  advocates  ?  Fifty  years  ago  diplo- 
matists were  anxious  to  meet  Mr.  Gladstone  as  a  man  who 
was  destined  to  come  to  the  front.  He  has  been  more  or 
less  in  the  front  of  Parliamentary  life  ever  since.  He  has 
spoken  on  all  great  questions  of  national  concern,  and 
on  many  of  minor  importance.  Fifty  years  in  the  public 
council  of  a  great  nation  is  a  long  period,  and  subjects  a 
man's  oratorical  powers  to  a  severe  test.  The  Parliament 
of  Great  Britain  has  come  to  no  important  decision  during 
that  long  period  without  hearing  Mr.  Gladstone's  voice. 
He  never  spoke  to  empty  benches.  The  House  always 
listened  with  interest  and  respect,  and  owned  the  charm  of 
his  speaking  even  when  the  majority  was  against  him. 

To  get  a  fair  measure  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  pursuasive 
power,  we  must  remember  that  there  have  been  hundreds 


GLADSTONE  AS  AN  ORATOR.  393 

of  occasions  on  which  the  decisions  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons have  been  determined  by  his  advice.  On  great  party 
questions  votes  are  more  or  less  immovable,  though  a  man 
should  speak  with  the  tongue  of  angels.  But  smaller  ques- 
tions are  constantly  arising  on  which  the  impartial  sense 
of  the  House  is  open  to  guidance.  The  present  writer 
never  fully  realized  Mr.  Gladstone's  power  as  a 
Parliamentary  orator  till  he  happened  on  such  an  occa- 
sion to  see  him  rise  with  a  suggestion  during  a  perplexed 
and  heated  debate  in  Committee.  The  Government  had 
made  a  concession,  and  there  had  been  some  half  an  hour's 
haggling  over  the  terms  of  it.  The  Minister  in  charge  of 
the  Bill  had  at  last  made  an  offer,  to  which  both  sides  were 
disposed  to  agree.  A  member  who  rose  to  continue  the  dis- 
cussion was  put  down  by  cries  of  "Agreed"  from  both 
sides  of  the  House.  Then  Mr.  Gladstone  rose,  and  in  a 
short  speech  of  five  minutes,  turned  the  house  so  completely 
round,  that  the  Ministerial  proposal  was  withdrawn  and  his 
own  unanimously  accepted.  Great  party  questions,  of 
course,  are  beyond  the  influence  of  any  oratory.  But  even 
on  these  the  attitude  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  opponents,  under 
the  spell  of  his  speech,  has  often  been,  "Almost  thou  per- 
suadest  me  to  renounce  my  party  intelligence. "  There  was 
a  memorable  instance  in  the  debate  on  the  Parnell  Commis- 
sion, when  Mr.  Gladstone  appealed  to  the  House,  as  a  body 
of  English  gentlemen,  to  make  amends  to  the  Irish  leader 
for  the  cruel  unfairness  of  charging  him  with  complicity  in 
atrocious  crime,  on  the  faith  of  what  had  been  proved  to  be 
forgeries. 

There  was  no  denying  the  immediate  effect  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's oratory.  But  we  sometimes  hear  it  said  .that  his 
speeches  are  not  so  impressive  when  read;  that  they  never^ 
like  Burke's,  express  profound  political  truths  in  imforget- 
able  words;  that  they  have  not  the  epigrammatic  felicity  of 
his  great  rival's ;  that  as  contributions  to  oratorical  lit- 


394  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

erature,  they  are  not  equal  to  the  best  of  Bright's  ;  that  they 
have  not  even  the  literary  flavor  of  Lord  Salisbury's  ;  that 
fifty  years  hence  nobody  will  read  them  but  the  historian. 
If  such  remarks  were  impressed  as  implying  defects,  we 
should  have  to  answer  that  they  amount  only  to  distinctions. 
Mr.  Gladstone's  oratory  is  marvelous  enough  in  the  range 
and  force  of  its  persuasive  power  to  be  none  the  less  worthy 
of  admiration  and  study,  though  it  should  want  the  charac- 
teristic excellences  of  other  orators.  Speeches  are  made  to 
be  heard,  not  read ;  to  affect  the  minds  of  living  men,  not 
to  provide  literary  entertainment  for  posterity.  The  real 
orator  is  part  and  parcel  of  his  time,  and  it  is  not  every 
time  that  furnishes  themes  of  permanent  dramatic  interest. 
"We  doubt  whether  Burke's  speeches  would  now  be  read  for 
their  political  philosophy  if  they  had  been  delivered  upon  oc- 
casions less  impressive  than  the  loss  by  Great  Britain  of  half 
its  empire,  and  the  tremendous  social  cataclysm  of  the  French 
Revolution.  O'Connell  was  a  great  orator,  but  who,  except- 
ing his  compatriots,  cares  now  to  read  his  speeches  on  Eman- 
cipation or  Repeal  ?  Disraeli's  attacks  on  Sir  Robert  Peel 
were  famous  in  their  day,  but  they  are  now  used  only  as  a 
quarry  by  the  studious  practitioner  of  epigrammatic  in- 
vective. They  are  as  far  from  the  pleasant  walks  of  the 
general  reader  now,  as  Mr.  Gladstone's  defense  of  the  great 
financial  statesman  which  had  the  advantage  at  the  time,  of 
convincing  the  House  of  Commons  and  the  country.  A 
masterly  array  of  facts  and  figures  and  financial  principles, 
must  always  be  heavier  reading  than  a  brilliant  series  of 
witty  personalities.  Mr.  Gladstone  has  always  been  heavily 
handicapped  as  an  oratorical  entertainer,  by  a  quality  which 
was  not  one  of  the  great  secrets  of  his  power  as  an  orator — 
a  passionate  determination  to  persuade.  To  pour  the  glow- 
ing fire  of  his  own  convictions  into  the  breasts  of  others, 
not  to  dazzle  their  eyes  with  rhetorical  fire-works,  this  has 
always  been  the  mark  at  which  his  speeches  aimed.  What 


GLADSTONE    AS    AN    ORATOR.       ,  3i»5 

Mr.  Glad-stone  might  have  been,  with  all  his  powers  of  mas- 
tering the  wills  of  men  by  speech,  if  his  lot  had  been  cast 
in  revolutionary  times,  it  would  be  idle  to  speculate;  but 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  age  has  not  seen  his  equal  in 
the  oratory  suited  to  the  circumstances  of  his  country.  It 
is  not  by  accident  that  his  speeches  seem  now,  when  we  go 
back  upon  them  and  read  them,  to  be  overburdened  with 
facts.  This  is  far  from  being  an  oratorical  defect  in 
speeches  meant  to  convince  as  the  late  Cardinal  Newman 
never  tired  of  insisting.  The  real  assent  upon  which 
men  act,  can  be  given  only  to  propositions  that  are  appre- 
hended in  the  concrete.  The  way  to  the  will  lies  through 
the  concrete  imagination.  One  of  the  secrets  of  the  force 
with  wThich  Mr.  Gladstone  penetrated  to  the  sources  of  con- 
viction is  the  vivid  clearness  with  which  he  dwelt  upon  the 
facts  of  a  case.  To  this,  of  course,  must  be  added  the  tact 
with  which  he  dwelt  upon  facts  within  the  apprehension  of 
his  audience.  To  the  academic  scholar  who  knows  nothing 
of  the  subject,  a  speech  of  his  on  finance  might  appear  un- 
utterably dull,  but  to  the  man  of  business  it  palpitated  with 
actuality.  We  may  mark  the  same  feature  when  the  topic- 
was  one  of  more  general  interest.  Mr.  Gladstone  discussed 
propositions  with  the  subtlety  and  logical  force  of  a  schol- 
astic doctor,  but  the  propositions  that  he  discussed  were  of 
real  and  living  interest  to  his  audience;  it  was  to  them  that 
he  addressed  himself  with  a  fiery  zeal  that  kept  hold  of  the  un- 
derstanding and  imagination.  Principles  were  there,  but  they 
were  not  presented  as  detachable  aphorisms ;  they  interpen- 
etrated the  substance  of  his  speeches;  they  were  clothed  in 
the  concrete  details  of  which  he  had  such  masterly  com- 
mand. His  fame  as  an  orator  was  that  of  a  consummate 
master  of  Parliamentary  debate,  a  skillful  pilot  of  Govern- 
ment measures.  His  greatest  triumphs  were  those  budget 
speeches  which  earned  for  him  the  title  of  the  "Wizard  of 
Finance."  His  name  stands  with  those  of  Pitt  and  Fox, 


396  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

Canning  Peel,  and  Disraeli;  he  performed  feats  of  oratory 
that  rivaled,  if  they  did  not  eclipse,  the  triumphs  of  O'Con- 
nell  and  Bright.  Whoever  has  not  seen  and  heard  Mr. 
Gladstone  address  a  crowd  of  thousands,  has  missed  one  of 
the  most  impressive  spectacles  ever  seen  by  man,  and  one  of 
the  most  splendid  exhibitions  of  individual  power. 

"Once  to  my  sight  the  giant  thus  was  given, 
Walled  by  wide  air  and  roofed  by  boundless  heaven; 
Beneath  his  feet  the  human  ocean  lay, 
And  wave  on  wave  stretched  into  space  away. 
Me  thought  no  clarion  could  have  sent  its  sound 
Even  to  the  center  of  the  hosts  around. 
And  as  I  thought,  rose  the  sonorous  swell 
As  from  the  church  tower  swings  some   silvery  bell. 
Erect  and  clear,  from  airy  tide  to  tide, 
It  glided  easy  as  a  bird  may  glide. 
Then  did  I  know  what  spells  of  infinite  choice 
To  rouse  and  lull,  has  the  sweet  human  voice: 
Then  did  I  seem  to  seize  a  sudden  clue 
To  the  grand  troublous  life  antique  to  view, 
Under  the  rock-stand  of  Demosthenes 
Mutable  Athens  heaves  her  noisy  seas." 

The  words  were  written  of  O'Connell,  but  one  irresistibly 
thinks  of  them  in  listening  to  Mr.  Gladstone.  His  voice 
was  of  singular  richness  and  sweet  resonance;  but  his  voice 
was  only  one  of  the  rare  combinations  of  the  orator's  physi- 
cal gifts.  Lord  Lytton  has  described  Mr.  Gladstone  himself 
in  lines  that  are  not  so  well  known: 

With  what  a  choice  variety  of  play 

The  gesture  pleases,  as  the  utterance  warms, 
While  changing  looks  the  changeful  thoughts  obey  ! 

So  would  Quintillian  have  composed  his  arms, 
And  so  Hortensius  might  have  paused  t  » lay 

Finger  on  palm,  ere  some  new  s  ntence  charms 
The  listening  ear  with  periods  rich,  that  rise 
In  tones  intensely  dotting  smallest  "i's  ! 
With  what  electric  light  the  dark  eye  glows 

From  lips  still  placid  with  a  smile  urbane, 
How  smooth  the  long  elaborate  prelude  flows. 

With  what  a  rapture  of  sublime  disdain 
The  quivering  frame  the  inward  passion  shows  ! 


CHAPTER   XXXVII. 
T.  P.  O'CONNOR'S  TRIBUTE  TO  GLADSTONE. 

"  Take  him  for  all  in  all, 
We  shall  not  see  his  like  again.'1 

— Shakesp&tre. 
% 

Each  petty  hand 

Can  steer  a  ship  becalmed;  but  he  that  will 
Govern  and  carry  her  to  her  end  must  know 
His  tides,  his  currents,  how  to  shift  his  sails; 
What  she  will  bear  in  foul,  what  in  fair  weather; 
Where  her  spring's  are,  her  leaks,  and  how  to  stop  'em; 
What  storms,  what  shelves,  what  rocks  do  threaten  them. 

— Ben  Jonsrm. 

We  are  glad  to  be  able  to  present  the  kindly  and  eloquent 
tribute  to  Mr.  Gladstone  from  the  fascinating  pen  of  Mr. 
T.  P.  O'Connor,  an  Irish  Representative  in  the  British  House 
of  Commons.  The  name  of  T.  P.  O'Connor  is  dear  to  the 
heart  of  every  Irishman,  whether  he  lives  in  Erin's  Isle  or 
finds  a  home  beneath  the  stars  and  stripes.  His  tribute  is 
full  of  the  most  delightful  personal  reminiscences. 

"It  is  nearly  thirty  3 ears  sinoe  I  saw  Mr.  Gladstone  for 
the  first  time.  I  had  just  come  to  London,  with  $20  in  my 
pocket,  and  while  going  through  all  the  agony  of  looking 
for  work,  had,  like  most  Irishmen,  felt  .that  I  must  pay  a 
visit  to  the  House  of  Commons.  This  was  in  the  year  1870. 
Mr.  Gladstone  was  then  Prime  Minister,  and  at  the  head  of 
the  most  powerful  administration  he  ever  led. 

' '  Those  were  the  days  before  dynamite  had  entered  into 
the  political  struggle,  and  it  was  much  easier  to  get  admis- 
sion to  the  galleries  of  the  House  of  Commons  then  than 
now.  The  view  which  one  has  from  the  strangers'  gallery 
is  not  good,  but  I  was  quite  happy. 


398  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"It  will  strike  your  readers  as  curious,  but  the  first 
impression  I  got  of  Mr.  Gladstone  was  somewhat  disap- 
pointing. I  was  a  young  Irish  idealist  and  something  of 
an  Irish  ascetic  at  the  time,  and  I  had  formed  from  the  pho- 
tographs of  Mr.  Gladstone  an  entirely  different  impression 
from  that  of  the  man  as  he  stood  in  the  flesh  before  me.  I 
had  imagined  him  a  thin  man  with  a  thin,  ascetic  face;  in 
fact,  I  had  expected  to  look  on  a  medieval  saint  rather 
than  on  a  man  of  flesh  and  blood.  Mr.  Gladstone's  face  was 
a  great  deal  fuller  than  I  had  expected,  and  the  voice,  deep, 
sonorous,  above  all  things  virile,  struck  me  as  that  of  rather 
of  the  man  of  flesh  than  of  the  man  of  fasts  and  vigils, 
which  my  untrained  imagination  had  expected  to  see.  And 
yet  there  was  something  which  seems  to  me  strangely  alike 
in  the  impression  I  formed  of  Mr.  Gladstone  at  that  moment 
ami  the  impression  I  got  on  the  last  occasion  I  heard  him 
speak  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

"For  many. years  afterward  I  saw  Mr.  Gladstone  con- 
stantly— at  political  meetings  at  which  he  used  to  speak,  and 
afterwards  as  a  member  of  the  reporting  staff  in  the  press 
gallery  of  the  House  of  Commons  I  had  abundant  opportu- 
nities of  hearing  and  seeing  him.  It  was  not,  however,  till 
I  entered  the  House  of  Commons,  in  the  year  1880,  that  I 
had  an  opportunity  of  seeing  him  at  quite  close  quarters; 
and  even  after  that  it  was  one  year  before  I  ever  had  an 
opportunity  of  personal  acquaintance.  In  those  far  off  days 
there  was,  as  everybody  remembers,  a  fierce  and  bitter 
struggle  between  the  Gladstone  ministry  and  the  Irish  party, 
led  by  Parnell,  and  the  two  sides  used  to  glare  at  each  other 
from  their  benches  in  a  way  that  it  is  almost  tragic  now  to 
recall.  Mr.  Gladstone,  of  course,  was  the  chief  object  of 
our  attack — next  to  Buckshot  Forster;  and  we  did  not  spare 
him.  Nor  did  Mr.  Gladstone  spare  himself  when  severe 
measures  had  to  be  taken  against  us.  The  forty-one  hours' 
sitting  in  the  session  of  1861,  during  which  we  kept  the 


T.   P.    6  CONNORS    TRIBUTE   TO   GLADSTONE.  399 

House  of  Commons  at  bay  and  which  wound  up  with  a  coup 
d'etat  that  has  profoundly  changed  the  whole  rules  and  sys- 
tem of  the  House  of  Commons,  was  one  of  the  occasions 
when  I  remember  seeing  an  extraordinary  proof  of  Mr. 
Gladstone's  resolution. 

In  the  bleak  early  morning,  after  a  long  night  of  work, 
and  sleeplessness,  and  anxiety,  I  was  crossing  Palace  Yard 
with  a  colleague,  to  go  to  the  Westminster  Palace  Hotel,  to 
rouse  Parnell,  who  was  asleep  there  for  the  night,  for  we 
knew  the  end  was  near  and  that  some  striking  action  was 
going  to  be  taken  against  us,  which  required  the  presence  of 
of  our  chief.  As  I  crossed  the  yard  I  saw  the  figure  of 
Gladstone  approaching  the  private  entrance  to  the  house, 
which  is  always  taken  by  Ministers,  and  I  Wa»  immensely 
struck  with  the  sight  of  this  septuagenarian  with  his  throat 
and  mouth  covered  with  a  big  comforter  so  as  to  prevent  the 
danger  of  cold  from  the  keen  morning  air.  He  walked 
along  all  alone,  rapid,  erect,  with  a  look  of  grim  determina- 
tion on  his  face. 

"I  knew  that  the  Irishmen  were  doing  nothing  but  their 
bare  duty,  but  I  could  not  help  feeling  some  wish  that  the 
duty  did  not  involve  such  fierce  antagonism  between  us  and 
that  stately  and  resolute  old  man,  who  was  giving  so  strong 
a  proof  of  his  energy  and  vitality,  and  whose  intentions  to 
Ireland,  we  always  knew,  were  as  good  as  his  lights  and  his 
circumstances  permitted. 

"As  the  years  passed,  the  ferocity  between  the  Glad- 
stone government  and  the  Irish  members  continued,  and  it 
was  the  Irishmen  voting  with  the  Tories  who  put  Mr. 
Gladstone  out  of  office  in  1885.  I  well  remember  that 
famous  night — it  was  the  night  of  June  8,  and  I  espe- 
cially remember  the  air  and  conduct  of  Mr.  Gladstone. 
We  had  been  fighting  his  government  for  five  long  years, 
and  the  fight  had  been  one  of  the  fiercest  in  parliamenta  ry 
history,  Member  after  member  of  our  party  had  been  im 


400  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

prisoned;  Parnell  had  spent  six  months  in  jail;  there  had 
been  an  outburst  of  violence,  followed  by  a  crop  of  execu- 
tions, and  in  short,  we  had  made  up  our  minds  that  the 
long-sought  and  prayed-for  hour  of  vengeance  had  struck 
at  last,  and  that  we  had  the  fate  of  the  Gladstone  govern- 
ment in  our  hands.  AVhen  the  news  began  to  circulate  that 
the  government  had  been  beaten — news  that  always  circu- 
lates before  the  actual  figures  are  given,  a  thrill  of  delight 
ran  through  the  Irish  benches;  men  began  already  to  cheer; 
and  when  at  last  it  was  known  that  Gladstone  was  beaten 
there  rose  on  the  air  the  wildest  shout  of  triumph  I  have 
ever  heard  in  the  House  of  Commons. 

"That  was  the  night  when  the  late  Lord  Randolph 
Churchill  climbed  like  a  school  boy  on  one  of  the  benches 
of  the  House,  and  taking  off  his  hat,  waved  it  wildly. 
Throughout  all  this  cyclone  it  was  remarkable  to  notice 
Mr.  Gladstone.  He  had  naturally  a  fiery  temper,  a  char- 
acteristic that  accounted  for  some  of  the  many  awkward 
scrapes  into  which  he  got  in  the  course  of  his  long  career, 
but  as  years  advanced  he  had  schooled  himself  into  great 
self-control. 

"That  composure  showed  itself  in  an  extraordinary  way 
on  the  night  of  June  8,  to  which  I  am  alluding.  In  the 
midst  of  the  tempest  he  kept  on  writing  on  a  bldtting  pad, 
the  nightly  report  which  he  had  to  send  to  the  Queen  of 
the  proceedings  of  the  House.  Indeed,  when  he  was  asked 
some  question  he  did  not  entirely  arise,  but  half  standing 
and  half  leaning,  with  the  letter  in  his  hand  and  the  blotting 
pad,  he  stood  up  to  face  his  triumphant  enemies. 

' '  He  could  not  speak  for  more  than  thirty  seconds,  if  not 
longer,  so  loud  was  the  tumult.  Throughout  it  all  he  re- 
ma;ned  quite  impassive.  Just  once  he  dropped  his  eyelid 
as  if  he  were  communing  with  himself,  and  wished  to  show 
how  little  he  recked  of  the  tumult  around  him;  and  then 
when  he  answered  the  question  put  to  him,  it  was  in  a  low, 


T.  p.  O'CONNOR'S  TRIBUTE  TO  GLADSTONE.          401 

even  voice,  in  which  there  was  not  even  the  smallest  indica- 
tion of  a  tremor. 

"As  time  went  on,  and  when  it  was  clear  that  Mr.  Glad- 
stone had  definitely  done  with  coercion,  the  relations  between 
him  and  the  Irish  members  were  of  course  different,  and  he 
and  they  often  had  meetings  and  conversations.  But  it  was 
not  always  easy  to  have  a  conversation  with  Mr.  Gladstone 
in  the  House  of  Commons.  He  was  a  man  who  above  all 
men  perhaps  that  ever  lived,  had  a  constant  and  incessant 
sense  of  the  value  of  time. 

* '  The  process  of  dividing  in  the  House  is  rather  lengthy, 
sometimes  it  takes  as  much  as  fifteen  to  twenty  minutes,  and 
this  was  far  too  large  a  space  of  time  for  so  busy  a  man  as 
Gladstone  to  allow  to  go  unused.  The  result  was,  that  nearly 
always  he  sat  down  at  one  of  the  writing  tables  which  are 
scattered  through  the  division  lobbies,  and  employed  the  time 
in  writing  a  letter,  or  in  finishing  the  dispatch  to  the  Queen, 
or  in  some  other  work.  If  he  were  not  at  work  in  this  way, 
he  utilized  the  time  in  getting  some  information  from  a 
member  who  had  something  to  say. 

' '  I  used  occasionally  to  manage  if  I  could,  without  an 
appearance  of  intrusion,  to  get  at  the  table  at  which  the  old 
man  sat,  and  even  in  private  conversation  and  in  the  rather 
low  tone  which  Englishmen  employ  in  such  conversations, 
it  was  impossible  to  keep  from  being  thrilled  by  the  sound 
of  that  magnificent  voice  of  the  great  Liberal  leader.  There 
was  never  any  voice  like  it  in  my  experience,  except  per- 
haps the  voice  of  Salvini.  It  was  not  merely  that  it  was 
strong  and  virile,  as  I  have  already  said,  but  that  there  was 
such  extraordinary  sweetness  and  richness  and  emotion  in  it; 
the  emotion  of  a  strong  and  a  composed  but  also  of  a  serious 
and  a  profound  nature.  Indeed  I  think  you  felt  this  omnipo- 
tence of  the  voice  of  Gladstone  more  in  private  than  in  public. 

"Often  have  I  heard  the  whole  House  thrilled  with  an 
interruption  which  the  old  man  would  make  in  the  speech  of 


402  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

an  opponent ;  it  was  a  thunder  crash  or  the  boom  of  artillery 
across  the  floor  of  the  House;  it  always  excited  attention, 
and  often  led  to  a  demonstration  either  of  assent  or  of  dan- 
ger. 

"The  first  time  I  ever  met  Mr.  Gladstone  at  dinner  was 
at  the  house  of  an  old  friend  of  his,  the  late  Sir  Charles 
Foster.  Sir  Charles  Foster  was  a  specimen  of  many  such 
friends,  men  who  had  entered  Parliament  at  an  ancient  per- 
iod, and  had  kept  up  the  intimacy  of  early  years  with  the 
great  old  man,  long  after  he  had  become  the  most  potent 
force  in  the  politics  of  the  world.  Sir  Charles  Foster  was 
kind  enough  to  put  me  next  Mr.  Gladstone  at  dinner,  and  I 
was  more  than  delighted  at  the  honor. 

' '  I  found  that  Mr.  Gladstone's  conversation  was  quite 
unaffected.  He  took  the  same  interest  in  small  things  as  in 
big ;  did  not  seek  -to  monopolize  the  talk  ;  in  short,  was 
simple,  easy,  natural  and  modest — just  what  one  would 
expect  from  so  great  and  fine  a  nature. 

' '  Not  long  after  this,  however,  I  had  a  fine  opportunity 
of  seeing  and  studying  him  from  near.  It  is  now  nearly 
ten  years  ago,  and  yet  it  seems  but  yesterday.  This  is  how 
it  came  about  : 

' '  Mr.  Herbert  Gladstone  was  the  President  for  that  year 
of  the  Liberal  Association  at  Chester.  Though  the  Town 
of  Chester  is  so  near  the  home  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  and 
though  it  has  some  strong  Liberal  traditions,  it  has  been 
Conservative  for  some  years  past.  The  Liberals  are,  how- 
ever, a  sturdy  and  an  enthusiastic  body,  and  they  always 
make  a  great  fight,  and  there  was  a  strong  desire  that  the 
year  of  office  of  Mr.  Herbert  Gladstone  would  be  signalized 
by  a  special  outburst  of  enthusiasm  and  work.  Mr.  Her- 
bert Gladstone  requested  me  to  speak  at  the  meeting  at 
which  he  was  to  make  his  appearance  as  President,  and  I 
consented.  As  I  was  so  busy  at  the  time  as  the  editor  of 
an  evening  newspaper,  as  a  member  of  the  House  of  Com- 


T.  P.  O'CONNOR'S  TRIBUTE  TO  GLADSTONE.          403 

mons,  and  as  a  platform  speaker,  I  was  unable  to  start  for 
the  meeting  until  the  morning  of  the  day  on  which  it  was 
to  take  place,  and  I  had  a  good  fourteen  hours'  journey 
from  London,  if  not  more,  before  I  got  to  Hawarden  Cas- 
tle. I  was  there  some  little  time  before  I  saw  any  member 
of  the  family,  but  I  remember  well  the  old  coachman  who 
took  me  to  the  castle. 

"With  his  wistful  face,  he  spoke  of  Mr.  Gladstone  as 
though  he  belonged  to  him.  It  was  one  of  the  proofs  of 
the  nobility  and  winningness  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  character, 
that  he  was  always  able  to  inspire  almost  passionate  attach- 
ment toward  him  in  those  who  were  brought  nearest  to  him. 

' '  After  a  time.  I  saw  Mr.  Gladstone,  and  then  he  invited 
me  to  walk  over  the  extensive  grounds  of  Hawarden  Castle. 
He  was  then  well  on  toward  80  years  of  age,  but  I  pity  the 
man  who  thought  it  was  altogether  an  easy  task  to  keep  up 
with  him. 

' '  Now  and  then  he  would  pause  to  point  me  out  some 
ruin  or  point  in  the  landscape,  or  to  wipe  his  brow.  It  was, 
one  of  the  many  signs  of  his  great  vitality,  that  his  skin 
always  worked  easily;  for  that  reason  he  loved  warm  weather. 
Well,  we  talked  of  all  kinds  of  subjects.  Among  other 
things  we  discussed  Mr.  Gladstone's  great  rival,  Disraeli, 
and,  though  I  knew  he  did  not  like  his  opponent,  he  was 
able  to  speak  of  him  with  great  dispassionateness,  and  even 
with  some  admiration  of  some  of  his  qualities. 

"The  year  I  speak  of  was  1887,  and  Disraeli  had  been 
some  years  dead,  and  this  may  account  to  some  extent,  for 
the  dispassionateness  of  tone,  but  still  it  was  rather  remark- 
able. One  of  the  things  he  said  was  that  previous  to  the 
Berlin  treaty,  he  had  said  of  Disraeli  that  he  was  the  most 
picturesque  figure  in  English  parliamentary  history,  except 
Lord  Chatham,  but  that  after  the  treaty  of  Berlin  he  with- 
drew the  qualification,  and  would  put  Disraeli  as  the  most 
interesting  figure,  without  any  exception. 


404  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

"There  were  some  allusions  to  Mr.  Chamberlain,  and 
there  was  a  curious  and  unforgettable  look  came  over  the 
old  man's  face  when  I  mentioned  that  name.  I  said  that 
what  people  most  admired  in  his  treatment  of  the  member 
for  West  Birmingham,  was  the  manner  in  which  he  ignored 
him.  The  old  man's  face  curled  up  into  a  thousand  wrin- 
kles, a  smile  of  infinite  merriment  came  into  his  face,  and 
he  enjoyed  the  statement  with  huge  and  palpable  delight. 

' '  It  had  a  good  deal  of  opportuneness  at  that  moment, 
because  Mr.  Gladstone  was  just  about  to  go  to  Birmingham 
and  invade  the  territory  of  the  arch  enemy  of  home  rule. 
The  statement  was  not  without  effect  too,  for  in  all  his 
speeches  at  Birmingham  he  never  mentioned  the  name  of 
Mr.  Chamberlain,  though  he  made  an  indirect  and  deadly 
allusion  to  him,  which  told  immensely. 

'  *  In  the  evening  Mr.  Herbert  Gladstone  and  his  mother 
and  myself  went  to  the  meeting  in  Chester.  It  was  in  some 
respects  the  most  interesting  part  of  a  day  eventful  in  my 
life,  for  I  was  able  in  this  journey  to  get  a  real  glimpse  into 
the  relations  between  the  wife  and  the  illustrious  husband; 
and  their  relations  are  part  not  only  of  their  own  history, 
but  of  the  history  of  their  country.  Her  affection  for  her 
husband  was  so  all-persuasive,  so  innocent,  that  it  came  out 
in  every  word. 

.'*•'!  have  heard  that  your  father  had  a  good  singing 
voice  in  his  youth, '  I  said  to  the  son.  He  answered  with 
the  lukewarmness  characteristic  of  the  young  when  talking 
of  their  parents,  or  perhaps,  to  be  more  accurate  and  fair, 
with  the  deprecatory  tone  which  modesty  compels  one  to 
sometimes  adopt  when  speaking  of  a  near  relative.  At 
once  Mrs.  Gladstone  burst  in  with :  '  O,  he  had  a  beautiful 
voice,  Herbert!'  and  then  she  told  how  coming  back  to  Lon- 
don after  her  meeting  and  her  betrothal  to  Mr.  Gladstone 
in  Rome,  she  heard  somebody  singing  in  a  drawing-room, 
and  before  she  knew  who  it  was,  exclaimed:  '  What  a  beau- 


T.  P.  O'CONNOR'S  TRIBUTE  TO  GLADSTONE.  iOo 

tiful  voice!'  The  owner  of  the  beautiful  voice  was  her  fu- 
ture husband,  whose  accomplishments  as  a  singer  were  up  to 
that  time  unknown  to  her. 

' '  Of  course,  I  had  a  good  many  opportunities  of  seeing 
Mr.  Gladstone  during  his  last  Parliament.  Then,  as  for 
many  years  previously,  I  had  to  write  a  weekly  and  often 
a,  nightly  chronicle  of  the  proceedings  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. In  those  chronicles  Mr.  Gladstone  always  figured 
largely.  Indeed,  if  one  only  watched  him  it  was  not  nec- 
essary to  pay  attention  to  anything  else. 

"  He  had  a  strange  power 'of  attracting  and  concentrat- 
ing attention  on  himself;  not  by  any  pose,  not  even  delib- 
erately, by  none  of  the  small  tricks  of  stage  management  by 
which  small  beings  are  sometimes  able  to  make  themselves 
the  center  of  the  stage,  whether  on  the  boards  of  real  or 
fictitious  life,  but  by  sheer  force  of  his  dominating  person- 
ality and  supreme  attractiveness. 

"I  always  thought  Mr.  Gladstone  the  handsomest  man 
in  the  House  of  Commons.  The  magnificent  head  nearly 
twice  the  size  of  an  ordinary  man's;  the  beautiful  white 
hair;  the  large,  finely  chiseled  features;  the  piercing  and 
flashing  dark  eyes,  made /the  more  remarkable  in  their  coal- 
like  blackness,  by  the  deadly  but  beautiful  pallor  of  the 
wonderful  complexion  and  the  fine  skin;  the  broad  shoulders, 
the  erect  walk,  the  atmosphere  of  abounding  vitality,  all  these 
things  made  up  the  most  remarkable  combination  of  physical 
strength  and  beauty  I  have  ever  seen  in  a  human  being. 

"And  then  his  activity  was  so  incessant  that  it  was  dif- 
ficult for  anybody  else  to  make  any  figure.  He  answered 
all  the  questions  which  could  be  put;  he  listened  to  almost 
every  word  of  debate;  he  was  nearly  always  on  the  watch; 
he  was  the  center  core  and  pivot  of  the  whole  assembly. 

"When  you  add  that  his  face  was  as  mobile  and  as 
changeable  as  an  inland  lake  under  an  April  sky;  that  anger, 
enjoyment,  interest,  boredom — all  these  inner  emotions 


•±U6  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

were  represented  on  his  face  as  rapidly  and  as  faithfully  as 
though  his  countenance  Avas  the  mirror  of  his  soul,  you 
will  see  how  intense  was. the  interest  which  he  inspired,  and 
how  easy  it  was,  looking  at  him  and  listening  to  him,  to 
understand  everything  that  was  going  on. 

"  I  well  remember  the  evening  of  his  last  speech  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  After  the  shy  manner  of  Englishmen, 
there  was  no  preliminary  announcement  that  it  was  to  be 
the  last  speech.  On  the  contrary,  there  was  every  indica- 
tion that  the  speech  was  only  the  opening  of  another  cam- 
paign, for  it  was  a  strong  pronouncement  against  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  House  of  Lords. 

"  Somehow  or  other  I  got  the  impression  that  the  long 
expected  and  solemn  hour  of  Gladstone's  farewell  to  the 
House  of  Commons  had  arrived.  The  impression  was  con- 
firmed by  the  fact  that  when  I  spoke  to  a  Scotchman,  sup- 
posed to  be  cold-blooded,  I  observed  that  his  eyes  were  full 
of  tears  and  that  there  was  a  tremor  in  his  voice. 

"I  have  to  go  back  to  the  first  night  I  saw  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, nearly  thirty  years  before,  and  to  recall  to  the  reader 
how  the  grace  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  pose  struck  me.  So  it 
was  on  this  night  of  nights.  There  was  nothing  strained  in 
the  voice.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  always  at  his  best  when  he 
spoke  with  perfect  composure,  and  when  he  had  his  voice, 
his  gesture,  and  his  mind  under  perfect  control.  The 
speech,  indeed,  was  not  to  be  distinguished  from  other 
speeches;  there  was  nothing  to  indicate  the  coming  good-by. 
I  am  told  by  another  member  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
however,  who  was  present,  that  before  he  left  the  House 
the  old  man  got  up  and  stood  on  the  step  of  the  Speaker's 
chair,  and  putting  his  hand  over  his  forehead,  u>ok  a  long, 
last  look  at  that  assembly  in  which  for  sixty  years  he  had 
been  so  prominent  a  figure.  It  was  his  wistful  and  silent 
farewell." 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

LAST   SCENES. 
Well  done,  good  and  faithful  servant.  — Matthew  xxv,  21. 

There  is  sorrow,  sorrow,  for  the  pulses  that  are  beating1, 
But  unutterably  blessed  are  the  dead. 

For  David,  after  he  had  served  his  own  generation  by  the  will  of 
God,  fell  asleep  and  was  laid  unto  his  fathers.  — Acts  xili,  36. 

Of  all  the  thoughts  of  God  that  are 
Borne  inward  unto  souls  afar, 

Along  the  psalmist's  music  deep, 
Now  tell  me  if  there  any  is, 
For  gift  or  grace  surpassing  this — 

"He  giveth  His  beloved  sleep"? 
***** 

And  friends,  dear  friends — when  it  shall  be 
That  this  low  breath  is  gone  from  me, 

And  round  my  bier  ye  come  to  weep, 
Let  one  most  loving  of  you  all, 
Say, — "  Not  a  tear  must  o'er  him  fall — 

He  giveth  his  beloved  sleep." 

— Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning. 

Sunset  and  evening  star, 

And  one  clear  call  for  me! 
And  may  there  be  no  moaning  of  the  bar, 

When  I  put  out  to  sea. 

But  such  a  tide  as  moving  seems  asleep, 

Too  full  for  sound  and  foam, 
When  that  which  drew  from  out  the  boundless  deep 

Turns  again  home. 

Twilight  and  evening  bell. 

And  after  that  the  dark  ! 
And  may  there  be  no  sadness  of  farewell 

When  1  embark. 

'  407 


408  LIFE    Of    GLADSTONE. 

For  tho'  from  out  our  bourne  of  Time  and  Place 

The  flood  may  bear  me  far, 
I  hope  to  see  my  Pilot  face  to  face 

When  I  have  crossed  the  bar. 

— Lord  Tennyson. 

Long  expected  events  come  suddenly  at  last.  The  English 
nation,  and  the  world  at  large,  watched  for  many  months, 
with  pathetic  interest  the  records  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  declin- 
ing health.  It  was  manifest  that  in  spite  of  his  magnificent 
constitution  and  of  the  fidelity  with  which  he  had  obej^ed 
the  laws  of  health,  the  end  of  the  long  illustrious  journey 
was  not  far  away.  The  sun,  and  the  light,  and  the  moon, 
and  the  stars  grew  dark;  the  keepers  of  the  house  began  to 
tremble,  and  those  that  looked  out  of  the  windows  were 
darkened;  he  rose  up  at  the  voice  of  the  bird,  and  the 
daughters  of  music  were  brought  sweet  and  low;  the  almond 
tree  flourished;  the  silver  cord  was  loosening;  the  majestic 
golden  bowl  was  growing  frail;  and  the  pitcher  went  slowly 
to  the  fountain.  The  blossoms  of  the  May  time  had  made 
the  pastures  of  Harwarden  beautiful.  Mr.  Gladstone  kneAv 
the  day  of  his  departure  was  near,  and  so  one  by  one  he 
bade  his  more  intimate  friends  farewell.  His  chief  delight 
and  solace  was  in  joining  in  the  singing  of  sacred  hymns. 
"Lead,  Kindly  Light,"  "Abide  With  Me,"  "Sun  of  My 
Soul,"  and  especially  "Rock  of  Ages."  The  last  vesper 
service  came.  His  son  Stephen  read  part  of  the  litany. 
The  last  conscious  effort  of  his  life  was  in  feeble  responses 
to  its  prayers.  His  utterances  grew  less  and  less  distinct. 
The  litany  drew  near  its  close: 

That  it  may  please  Thee  to  defend  and  provide  for  the 
fatherless  children  and  widows,  and  all  who  are  desolate  and 
oppressed. 

We  beseech  Thee  to  hear  us,  good  Lord. 

That  it  may  please  Thee  to  have  mercy  upon  all  men. 

We  beseech  Thee  to  hear  «.«,  good  Lord. 


LAST    SCENE.  409 

That  it  may  please  Thee  to  forgive  our  enemies,  persecu- 
tors, and  slanderers,  and  to  turn  their  hearts. 

We  beseech  Thee  to  hear  us,  good  Lord. 

That  it  may  please  Thee  to  give  to  our  use  the  kindly 
fruits  of  the  earth,  so  that  in  due  time  we  may  enjoy  them. 

We  beseech  Thee  to  hear  us,  good  Lord. 

That  it  may  please  Thee  to  give  us  true  repentance;  to 
forgive  us  all  our  sins,  negligence,  and  ignorance;  and  to 
endow  us  with  the  grace  of  Thy  Holy  Spirit,  to  amend  our 
lives  according  to  Thy  Holy  Word. 

We  beseech  Thee  to  hear  its,  good  Lord. 

Son  of  God,  we  beseech  Thee  to  hear  us. 

Son  of  God,  we  beseech  Thee  to  hear  us. 

O  Lamb  of  God,  who  taketh  away  the  sins  of  the  world, 

Grant  us  Thy  peace. 

O  Lamb  of  God,  who  taketh  away  the  sins  of  the  world, 

Have  mercy  upon  iis. 

And  then  with  life's  last  breath  the  dying  Christian  said, 
"Amen!"  That  was  the  last  utterance  of  the  venerable 
saint.  The  light  began  to  break  through  the  castle  windows; 
and  in  the  dawn  of  a  beautiful  May  morning,  the  spirit  of 
William  E wart  Gladstone  passed  to  where  ' '  beyond  these 
voices  there  is  peace." 

On  Friday  May  20th,  1898,  Parliament  met  to  do  honor 
to  the  memory  of  her  illustrious  son.  Party  was  forgot- 
ten in  both  houses,  and  in  speeches  dewy  with  tears,  the  men 
who  had  fought  side  by  side  with  the  dead  hero,  and  the 
men  who  had  fought  against  him,  bore  equal  testimony  to 
his  greatness  and  his  goodness.  An  address  to  the  Queen 
was  moved,  asking  Her  Majesty  to  give  directions  for  a  pub- 
lic funeral  and  the  erection  of  a  suitable  monument  in  honor 
of  the  departed  statesman.  This  gave  the  leaders  in  both 
Houses  of  Parliament  opportunity  to  express  their  high 
regard  for  Mr.  Gladstone.  We  very  gladly  present  ex- 
cerpts from  these  impressive  eulogies. 


410  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

THE  MARQUIS  OF  SALISBURY. 

'  'The  controversies  of  the  past  are  so  far  forgotten.  But 
there  is  no  difference  of  feeling  or  of  opinion  in  the  honor 
which  we  may  pay  to  the  great  statesman,  or  in  our  desire 
that  that  honor  should  be  duly  displayed  before  the  eyes  of 
the  world.  What  is  the  cause  of  this  unanimous  feeling? 
Of  course  he  had  qualities  which  distinguished  him  from  all 
other  men,  and  you  may  say  that  it  was  his  transcendent 
intellect,  his  astonishing  power  of  attaching  men  to  him,  the 
great  influence  which  he  was  able  to  exert  on  the  convic- 
tions and  thoughts  of  his  contemporaries.  But  these  things, 
which  explain  the  attachment  and  the  admiration  of  those 
whose  ideas  he  represented,  would  not  explain  why  it  is, 
that  sentiments  almost  as  fervent  are  felt  and  expressed  by 
those  whose  ideas  were  not  expressed  by  his  policy.  I  do 
not  think  the  reason  is  to  be  found  in  anything  so  far  re- 
moved from  the  common  feelings  of  mankind,  as  the  abstruse 
and  controverted  questions  of  the  policy  of  the  day.  They 
have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Whether  he  was  right  or 
whether  he  was  wrong  in  all  the  measures  or  in  most  of 
the  measures  which  he  proposed,  those  are  matters  of 
which  the  discussion  has  passed  by,  and  would  certainly 
be  singularly  inappropriate  here,  but  which  are  really  re- 
mitted to  the  judgment  of  future  generations,  who  will 
securely  judge  by  experience  what  we  can  only  decide  by 
conjecture. 

'  'But  it  was  more  on  account  of  considerations  common  to 
the  mass  of  human  beings,  and  to  the  general  working  of  the 
human  mind,  than  any  controverted  questions  of  policy,  that 
men  recognized  in  him  a  man  guided — whether  under  mis- 
taken impressions  or  not,  it  matters  not — but  guided  in  all 
the  steps  he  took,  in  all  efforts  he  made,  by  a  high  moral 
ideal.  What  he  sought  were  the  achievements  of  great  ideals ; 
and  whether  they  were  based  on  sound  convictions  or  not, 
they  could  have  issued  from  nothing  but  the  greatest  and 


LAST    SCENE. 

the  purest  moral  aspirations;  and  he  is  honored  by  his  coun- 
trymen because  through  so  many  years,  across  so  many 
vicissitudes  and  conflicts,  they  recognized  this  one  character- 
istic of  his  action  which  has  never  ceased  to  be  felt.  He  will 
leave  behind  him,  especially  to  those  who  have  followed 
with  deep  interest  the  history  of  his  later  years — I  might 
almost  say  the  later  months  of  his  life — the  memory  of  a 
great  Christian  statesman  set  up  necessarily  on  high,  whose 
character,  motives  and  intentions  could  not  fail  to  strike  all 
the  world.  He  will  leave  a  deep — a  most  salutary  influence 
on  the  political  and  social  thought  of  the  generation  in  which 
he  lived,  and  he  will  be  long  remembered,  not  so  much  for 
the  causes  in  which  he  was  engaged,  or  the  political  projects 
which  he  favored,  but  as  a  great  example  of  which  history 
hardly  furnishes  a  parallel — of  a  great  Christian  man." 

LORD    KIMBERLY,   LIBERAL  LEADER   IN  THE  HOUSE  OF   LORDS. 

•"The  appreciation  of  the  moral  qualities  of  the  man,  of  the 
hiffh-mindedness  of  his  conduct,  of  the  unvarying  upright- 
ness of  his  conduct,  and  of  the  sense  which  the  nation  feels 
that  in  him  we  have  lost  not  merely  a  statesman  of  great 
power  and  great  reputation,  but  we  have  lost  a  man  who  set 
an  example  to  all  who  occupy  a  high  place  in  this  country, 
and  to  the  people  of  the  country,  whether  high  or  low,  of  a 
life  nobly  spent — pure  in  its  intentions — pure  in  its  conduct, 
and  which  I  agree  will  hereafter  be  considered  a  bright  ex- 
ample to  the  nation." 

THE    DUKE    OF    DEVONSHIRE. 

"  Our  severance  from  one  with  whom  we  had  been  in  rela- 
tions of  intimate  confidence  and  warm  personal  friendship, 
must  necessarily  have  been,  and  was  to  us,  a  most  painful 
position.  But,  although  it  was  not  in  the  character  of  Mr. 
GLADSTONE  to  shrink  from  letting  his  opponents  feel  the  full 
weight  of  his  blame  or  censure,  when  he  considered  blame 


412  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

or  censure  was  deserved,  I  can  truly  say  that  1  can  recall  no 
word  of  his  which  added  unnecessarily  to  the  bitterness  of 
that  position.  Deeply  as  we  regret  the  difference  of  opin- 
ion which  caused  the  separation  between  Mr.  Gladstone  and 
many  of  those  who  had  been  his  most  devoted  adherents,  we 
never  doubted,  and  we  do  not  doubt  now,  that  in  that,  as  in 
every  other  matter  with  which  during  his  long  public  life  he 
had  to  deal,  he  was  actuated  by  no  other  consideration  than 
that  of  a  sense  of  public  duty  and  by  his  conception  of  that 
which  was  in  the  highest  interests  of  his  country." 

LORD    ROSEBERRY. 

"There  are  two  features  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  intellect  which 
I  cannot  help  noting  on  this  occasion,  for  they  were  so  sig- 
nal and  so  saliant,  and  distinguished  him  so  much,  so  far  as 
I  know,  from  all  other  minds  that  I  have  come  into  contact 
with,  that  it  would  be  wanting  on  this  occasion  if  they  were 
not  noted.  The  first  was  his  enormous  power  of  concen- 
tration. There  never  was  a  man,  I  feel,  in  this  world,  who 
at  any  given  moment,  on  any  given  subject,  could  so  devote 
every  resource  and  power  of  his  intellect,  without  the 
restriction  of  a  single  nerve  within  him,  to  the  immediate 
purpose  of  that  subject.  And  the  second  feature  is'  one 
which  is  also  rare,  but  which,  I  think,  has  never  been  united 
so  much  with  the  faculty  of  concentration,  and  it  is  this — 
the  infinite  variety  and  multiplicity  of  his  interests.  There 
was  no  man,  I  suspect,  in  the  history  of  England — no  man, 
at  any  rate,  in  recent  centuries,  who  touched  the  intel- 
lectual life  of  the  country  at  so  many  points  and  over  so 
great  a  range  of  years.  But  that  was  in  fact  and  reality  not 
merely  a  part  of  his  intellect,  but  of  his  character;  for  the 
first  and  most  obvious  feature  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  character 
was  the  universality  and  the  humanity  of  his  sympathy.  I 
do  not  now  mean,  as  we  all  know,  that  he  sympathized  with 
great  causes  and  with  oppressed  nations  and  with  what  he 


LAST    SCENE.  413 

believed  to  be  the  cause  of  liberty  all  over  the  world,  but  I 
do  mean  his  sympathy  with  all  classes  of  human  beings, 
from  the  highest  to  the  lowest. " 

THE    RIGHT    HON.    A.   J.     BALFOUR,    LEADER    OF    THE  HOUSE  OF 

COMMONS. 

"I,  Sir,  feel  myself  unequal  even  to  dealing  with  what  is 
perhaps  more  strictly  germane  to  this  address — I  mean 
Mr.  Gladstone  as  a  politician,  as  a  minister,  as  a  leader  of 
public  thought,  as  an  eminent  servant  of  the  Queen.  And 
if  I  venture  to  say  anything  to  the  House,  it  is  rather  of 
Mr.  Gladstone  as  the  greatest  member  of  the  greatest  delib- 
erative Assembly  that  so  far  the  world  has  seen.  Sir,  I 
think  it  is  the  language  of  sober  and  of  unexaggerated  truth 
to  say  there  is  no  gift  which  would  enable  one  to  move,  to 
influence,  to  adorn  an  Assembly  like  this,  that  Mr.  Glad- 
stone did  not  possess  in  a  super-eminent  degree.  Debaters 
as  ready,  orators  as  finished,  there  may  have  been.  It  may 
have  been  given  to  others  to  sway  as  skilfully  this  critical 
Assembly,  or  to  appeal  with  as  much  'directness  and  force 
to  the  simpler  instincts  of  great  masses  of  our  countrymen; 
but  it  has  been  given  to  no  man  to  combine  all  those  great 
gifts  as  they  were  combined  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone, from  the  conversational  discussion  appropriate  to 
our  work  in  Committee  to  the  most  sustained  eloquence. 

"Whatever  judgment  we  may  have  had  of  his  opinions, 
Mr.  Gladstone  added  a  dignity  and  weight  to  the  delibera- 
tions of  this  House  by  his  genius,  which  I  think  it  is  im- 
possible adequately  to  replace.  It  is  not  enough,  at  least  in 
my  opinion,  for  us  to  keep  up  simply  a  level,  though  it  be 
a  high  level,  of  probity  and  patriotism.  The  mere  average 
of  civic  virtue  is  not  sufficient  to  preserve  this  assembly 
from  the  fate  which  has  overcome  so  many  other  assemblies, 
the  products  of  democratic  forces.  More  than  this  is 
required,  more  than  this  was  given  to  us  by  Mr.  Gladstone. 


114:  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

He  brought  to  our  debates  a  genius  which  compelled  atten- 
tion, he  raised  in  the  public  estimation  the  whole  level  of 
our  proceedings,  and  they  will  be  most  ready  to  admit  the 
infinite  value  of  this  service,  who  realize  how  much  the 
public  prosperity  is  involved  in  the  maintenance  of  the 
worth  of  public  life  and  how  perilously  difficult  most  dem- 
ocracies apparently  feel  it  to  be  to  avoid  the  opposite  dan- 
gers into  which  so  man}'  of  them  have  fallen." 

SIR   WILLIAM    VERNOX    HARCOURT LIBERAL   LEADER. 

"To  the  matchless  power  of  his  genius  he  added  qualities 
still  more  valuable.  He  greatly  reverenced  the  House  of 
Commons.  He  desired  to  maintain  its  reputation  as  the 
great  organ  of  the  will  of  a  free  people.  No  one  who  has 
seen  will  ever  forget  the  stately  dignity,  the  old-world  cour- 
tesy, which  he  ever  extended  to  foe  and  to  friend  alike. 
His  conduct  of  the  House  of  Commons,  whether  in  Govern- 
ment or  in  Opposition,  bore  all  the  marks  of  a  lofty  spirit. 
He  respected  others  as  he  respected  himself,  and  he  con- 
controlled  both  by  his  magnanimity.  He  was  strong,  but 
he  was  also  gentle.  He  was  to  us  not  only  a  great 
statesman,  but  he  was  a  great  gentleman.  AVe  felt, 
as  the  right  honorable  gentleman  has  said,  that,  he 
exalted  the  spirit  of  the  Assembly  in  which  he  was  the  undis- 
puted chief,  in  what  he  did;  and  we  felt  that  the  House  of 
Commons  was  greater  by  his  presence,  as  it  is  greater  by 
his  memory.  What  he  did  for  this  House  he  did  for  the 
nation.  I  think  it  is  impossible  to  overvalue  the  influence 
which  the  purity  and  the  piety  of  his  public  and  his  private 
life  has  had  upon  the  life  of  this  country.  It  has  exercised 
a  lasting  influence  upon  the  moral  sense  of  the  people  at 
large.  They  have  watched  him  through  all  the  trials  of  a 
long  career  passed  under  the  fierce  light  of  political  contro- 
versy, and  they  have  found  in  it  an  example  which  has  per- 
manently raised  the  standard  of  public  life  in  this  nation. 


MR.  AND  MRS.  GLADSTONE  ON  THEIR  GOLDEN  WEDDING  DAY. 


MR.   GLADSTONE'S   LAST  PUBLIC  APPEARANCE.     DENOUNCING  THE  TUR- 
KISH ATROCITIES  ON  THE  ARMENIANS. 


LAST    SCENE.  415 

What  many  have  preached,  he  practised.  His  life  has  been 
a  lesson  which  has  not  been,  and  will  not  be,  forgotten. 
There  is  not  a  hamlet  in  this  land  where  his  virtues  are  not 
known  and  felt.  They  feel  that  his  heart  was  ever  with  the 
weak,  the  miserable  and  the  poor.  They  remember  how 
much  of  his  life  was  spent  in  labors  to  alleviate  their  lot. 
They  know  that,  to  him,  they  were  always  his  flesh  and 
blood.  His  sympathies  were  not  confined  by  any  narrow 
bounds.  The  ruling  passions  of  his  heart  were  freedom  and 
peace — freedom  not  only  for  his  own,  but  for  every  people, 
and  peace  with  freedom — the  glad  tidings  of  great  joy,  the 
gospel  of  that  religion  to  which  he  was  devoutly  attached. 
His  voice  went  forth,  wherever  they  might  dwell,  to  all  who 
were  desolate  and  oppressed." 

JOHN  DILLON  M.    P.   SPEAKS  FOR  IRELAND. 

"Even  when  racked  with  pain  and  with  the  shadow  of 
death  darkening  over  him,  his  heart  still  yearned  towards 
the  people  of  Ireland,  and  his  last  public  utterance  was  a 
message  of  sympathy  for  Ireland  and  of  hope  for  her  future. 
His  was  a  great  and  deep  nature.  He  loved  the  people  with 
a  wise  and  persevering  love.  His  love  of  the  people  and  his 
abiding  faith  in  the  efficacy  of  liberty  and  of  government 
based  on  the  consent  of  the  people,  as  an  instrument  of  human 
progress,  were  not  the  outcome  of  youthful  enthusiasm,  but 
the  deep-rooted  growth  of  long  years,  and  drew  their  vigor 
from  an  almost  unparalleled  experience  of  men  and  of  affairs. 
Mr.  Gladstone  was  the  greatest  Englishman  of  his  time; 
he  loved  his  own  people  as  much  as  any  Englishman 
who  ever  lived;  but  through  communion  with  the  hearts 
of  his  own  people  he  acquired  that  greater,  wider  gift, 
the  power  of  understanding  and  sympathising  with  other 
peoples. 


'4:16  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

On  Sunday  May  2*M,  the  Sunday  immediately  succeeding 
Mr.  Gladstone's  death,  the  churches  of  every  name  and 
order  in  his  native  land,  paid  impressive  homage  to  his 
memory.  From  the  pulpits  of  stately  cathedrals  and  of 
modest  hamlet  churches;  from  the  lips  of  Bishops  and  Arch- 
bishops, of  Deans  and  Rectors  and  Curates  all  over  the  land, 
there  was  with  one  consent  the  utterance  of  deep  and  sincere 
respect.  There  was  admiration  for  a  career  so  illustrious, 
and  thankfulness  that  the  end  was  so  calm.  The  pronounced 
nonconformists  including  especially  the  Baptists  and  Con- 
gregationalists,  were  as  deep  and  tender  in  their  sorrow,  as 
the  church  of  which  Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  member.  Not 
only  in  the  pulpits  of  the  British  isles  of  every  shade  of 
religious  faith,  but  in  thousands  of  American  pulpits  also, 
was  the  life  of  Mr.  Gladstone  made  the  subject  of  inspiring 
sermons.  All  the  world  honored  him  while  he  lived;  all 
the  world  mourned  him  when  he  died. 


11  What  is  excellent 

As  God.  lives,  is  permanent. 

Hearts  are  dust,  hearts'  loves  remain; 

Hearts'  love  will  meet  thee  again. " 

R.  W.  Emerson. 


Fire  Liei;  -,  badly  burned 

iternal  injuries  feared. 

Mrs.    Harry    Isbeinz,   guest,    hands   lac 

•ated  and  severely  injured  by  falling  ir 

:r  descent. 

A.    P.   Atkinson,   guest,  face  and  throa 

jrned  while  descending  a  fire  escape. 

George    Atkinson,    guest,   badly   bruisec 

7  falling  to  the  ground. 

•»  •  » 

The  Palace  Car  Deal 

Chicago,  Oct.  22.— The  Chronicle  tomor 
•w  will  says:  As  a  corollary  of  the  Pull 
an-Wagner  consolidation  deal,  the  ad 
istment  of  railroad  stockholders  on  ai 
lormous  scale  it  is  said  on  high  authorit: 
to  be  the  next  move  on  the  boards,  j 
lancier  with  very  close  relations  to  th 
organ  financial  syndicate  of  New  York 
>w  in  Chicago,  is  authority  for  the  state 
ent  that  the  next  few  months  will  wit 
•ss  a  sweeping  consolidation  of  railroa 
terests.  The  plans  of  Morgan  and  hi 
lies,  according  to  the  authority  quotec 
'e  no  less  than  the  welding  together  of  th 
ilroad  interests  controlled  by  the  Har 
nan-Gould  and  Vanderbilt  interests. 
*  »  » 

The  Nebraska  Campaign 
Chicago,     Oct.     22.— William     J.     Brya 
Dpped  off  in  Chicago  today  long  enoug: 

meet  John  P.  Altgeld.  The  former  gov 
nor  assured  the  Nebraska  man  that  h 
is  ready  to  go  into  his  friend's  horn 
ite  and  make  ten  speeches  when  th 
mpaign  committee  was  ready  to  bid  hin 

so.  Governor  Roosevelt  of  New  Yorl 
d  Assistant  Secretary  of  War  Meikle 
tin  will  visit  Nebraska  in  the  interest  o 
e  Republican  ticket. 

*-•••» 

Blizzard  Victims 

liruieapolis,  Oct.  22.— A  special  to  the 
mes  from  Great  Falls,  Mont.,  says:  Nin< 
m  perished  in  the  recent  blizzard.  Fivt 
flies  have  been  recovered  and  it  is  prob- 
le  that  this  is  not  half  the  lost.  The 
it  body  found  was  that  of  H.  Herrald,  e 
2epherder.  The  sheep  had  eaten  off  his 
ird,  clothing  and  part  of  his  boots.  Sev- 
il  bands  of  sheep  without  herders  hav« 
en  wandering  in  that  country  and  poim 
unknown  deaths. 

o  •  » 

Bryan,  at  Toledo 

Toledo,  O.,  Oct.  22.— Mr.  and  Mrs.  W.  J 
yan  passed  through  the  city  this  morn 
:  bound  for  Harlan,  la.,  where  Mr.  Bryai 
3  an  engagement  to  speak  Monday.  H 
11  go  direct  from  there  to  Nebraska.  H 
rs  the  fight  in  Nebraska  will  be  an  ex 
)tionally  warm  one  and  claims  the  stati 

his  party  by  an  increasing  majority. 

•*-•-•• 

A  Fatal  Prize  Fight 
fhicago,    Oct.   22.— William   Wilke,    aged 
died  last  night,  one  hour  after  receiv- 

blows  on  the  nose,  jaw  and  pit  of  tht 
tnach  in  a  prize  fight  with  Charles  Che- 
!,  aged  19,  in  the  basement  of  the  Wilke 
ne.  The  boys  belonged  to  amateur 
bs  and  fought  for  a  $5  purse.  Chellus 


DICTIONARY  OF  BOER  WORI 

Some  of  the  Terms  That  Will  Be  Foi 
in  War  Telegrams 

Here  are  some  of  the  Dutch  words 
are  of tenest  in  print  in  connection  witr 
news  of  the  Transvaal  and  their  pron. 
ciation  and  meaning: 

Bloemfontein  (bloom-fon-tine)  

Flower  four 

Boer  (boo-er)  Fai 

Buitenlander  (boy-ten-lont-er)  ..Forei 

Burgher  (buhr-ker)  Git 

Burgerregt  (buhr-ker-rekt)  —  Citizer 

Burgerwacht  (buhr-ker-vokt)  

Citizen  sole 

Jonkherr  (yunk-hare) 

..Member  of  the  Volkraad;  gentle 

Oom  (ome)  t 

Raad  (rahd)  Se 

Raadsheer   (rahds-hare)    Ser 

Raad  huis  (rahd-hoys) Senate  li 

Rand  (rahnt) Margin; 

Staat  (staht)  i 

Staatkunde  (staht-kuhn-de)  Po. 

Staatsraad  (stahts-rahd)  ..Counclof  s 

Stad  (stot)  

Stemmer  (stemmer)  Voter;  el< 

Transvaal  (trons-fahl)  —  Circular  v 

Trek  (treck)  Draught;  jou 

Trekken  (treck-eh  To  draw;  to  tl 

Trekpaar  (treckpahrd)  Draft! 

Uit  (oyt) Out;o 

Uitlander  (oyt-lont-er)  Forei 

Vaal  (fahl)  V 

Vaderlandslifde  (fah-ter-lonts-leef-t$) 

Love  of  one's  country;  patrij 

Veld  (felt)  Field;  open] 

Veldheer  (felt-hare). General;  comman 
Veldwachter  (felt-cock-ter)  ..Rural  g 

Volksraad  (f ulks-rahd)  

Lower  house  of  conj 

Voorregt  (fore-rekt)  ..  Franchise;  prrv 
Vreemdeling  (frame-da-1'ing)  ....  Strs 
WHtwartersrand  (vit-vot-ters-ront)  .. 

Margin  of  the  white  ^s 

Dutch  dipthongs  are  not  given  the; 
sound  as  their  equivalents  in  English, 
double  "o"  for  instance  in  Dutch  ha 
same  sound  as  "o"  in  Rome,  while  the. 
thong  "oe"  is  pronounced  by  the  Dut 
we  pronounce  "oo"  in  boot.  The  En 
pronounciation  of  these  two  dlphthoi 
the  reverse  of  that  given  them  by 
who  speak  Dutch.  And  "ou"  has  the  £ 
of  "ow"  in  owl.  The  sound  of  "ui"  is 
ly  like  that  of  the  English  "oy"  In  boy 
Dutch  double  "aa"  is  the  same  as  the 
lish  "a"  in  war.  As  there  is  no  "y"  in  I 
its  place  is  taken  by  "ij,"  which  is  soi 
as  "y"  in  defy. 

Pretoria,  the  capital  of  the  South  Af 
republic,  is  named  in  honor  of  its  first 
ident,  Pretorius,  who  led  the' Dutch  i 
great  trek,  or  journey,  out  of  Cape  C 
60  years  ago  and  into  the  Transvaal 
cape  the  dominion  of  England.  Joha: 
burg  is  easily  translated  into  EngU 
Johnstown.  The  term  of  "Afrikand* 
used  to  designate  the  Dutch  from  the 
white  people  of  South  Africa.— St.  '. 
Post-Dispatch. 


CHAFfER   XXXIX. 

THE  NATION'S  TRIBUTE. 

And  when  he  dies,  he  bears  a  lofty  name; 

A  light,  a  landmark  on  the  cliffs  of  fame.—  Anonymous. 
And  when  all  the  congregation  saw  that  Aaron  was  dead,  they 
mourned  for  Aaron  thirty  days,  even  all  the  house  of  Israel.—  Num- 
bers xx  ,  2.9. 

There  is  no  death  !     What  seems  so  is  transition  ; 

This  life  of  mortal  breath 
Is  but  the  suburb  of  the  Elysian 

Whose  portal  we  ea.ll  Death. 

— Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow. 

Hawarden  bells  !  Hawarden  bells  ! 
How  sad  the  tale  your  moaning  tells — 
O'er  castle  tower  and  craggy  fells, 
Hawarden  bells !  Hawarden  bells  ! 
A  nation  hears  your  solemn  chime — 
"  Gladstone  has  passed  the  bounds  of  time  " — 
And  England's  heart  with  sorrow  swells, 
Hawarden  bells  !  Hawarden  bells  ! 
He,  saintliest  among  saintly  men, 
Has  calmly  breathed  his  last  ;'  Amen  !  " 
Toll  sweet  and  low,  your  passing  Knells, 
Hawarden  bells  !  Hawarden  bells  ! 

— Thomas  W.  Handford. 

It  was  a  foregone  conclusion  that  the  nation  should  claim 
the  privilege  of  taking  charge  of  the  funeral  of  Mr.  Glad- 
stone. Now  that  death  had  enshrined  him  he  belonged  to 
the  nation  more  than  ever,  and  nothing  less  would  meet  the 
desires  or  sooth  the  anguish  of  England's  sad  heart  but  that 
she  might  bear  his  sacred  dust  into  the  venerable  abbey  that 
has  been  for  centuries  the  shrine  and  resting  place  of  her 
noblest,  her  bravest  and  her  best.  Archdeacon  Bradley 
says  that  more  than  twenty-five  years  ago  Dean  Stanley 


418  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

had  marked  out  the  spot  where  he  hoped  his  friend  would 
finally  rest. 

Almost  on  the  stroke  of  noon  on  Saturday,  28th  of  May, 
1898,  the  plain  oak  coffin,  containing  the  earthly  remains  of 
Mr.  Gladstone,  was  committed  to  the  grave  in  the  States- 
men's Transept  of  Westminster  Abbey.  By  ten  o'clock 
the  Lords  and  Commons  had  met  in  their  respective  Cham- 
bers, while  the  Mayors,  Chairmen  of  County  Councils,  and 
representatives  of  all  kinds,  who  made  up  a  microcosm  of 
the  nation,  were  in  their  places  in  the  Abbey. 

The  Members  of  Parliament  met  silently — about  four 
hundred  of  the  Commons,  and  a  hundred  of  the  Lords, 
including  a  dozen  Bishops.  Just  before  half-past  ten  the 
Speaker  led  the  Commons  into  Westminster  Hall,  where 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  lain  in  state  for  two  days;  and  it  is  esti- 
mated that  not  less  than  one  hundred  and  sixty  thousand 
persons  had  paid  their  respectful  homage  to  the  dead  states- 
man. The  Lords,  about  the  same  time,  followed  the  Lord 
Chancellor  to  the  same  place.  There,  the  coffin  was  still 
resting  upon  the  lofty  catafalque,  with  a  brass  cross  at  the 
head,  and  at  the  foot  the  rich,  gold-embroidered  cream  pall 
presented  to  Hawarden  Church  in  memory  of  the  tragic 
death  of  Archbishop  Benson  in  one  of  the  pews.  The  dis- 
tinguished pall-bearers  were  waiting  in  a  room  apart.  Mrs. 
Gladstone,  her  daughters  and  daughters-in-law,  with  Mis& 
Dorothy  Drew  and  other  grandchildren,  awaited  the  arrival 
of  the  body  in  the  Abbey,  but  Rev.  Stephen  Gladstone,  the 
chief  mourner,  with  his  three  little  sons,  Messrs.  'Henry 
and  Herbert  Gladstone,  Rev.  Harry  Drew  and  Dean  Wick- 
ham,  and  Master  Charles  Glynne  Gladstone,  son  of  the  dead 
eldest  son,  William  H.  Gladstone,  and  heir  to  the  Hawarden 
estate,  took  their  places  immediately  behind  the  coffin.  A 
deputation  of  one  hundred  villagers  from  Hawarden  formed 
the  rear  of  the  procession.  There  was  scarcely  a  bit  of 
color  to  relieve  the  gloom.  The  family's  request  for  every- 


THE  NATION'S  TRIBUTE.  419 

thing  to  be  very  simple  was  most  faithfully  followed. 
Though  it  was  a  State  ceremony,  even  the  Heralds,  Pur- 
suivants and  Kings  of  Arms,  who  led  the  various  sections 
of  the  cortege  wore  plain  mourning.  The  Lords  and  Com- 
mons first  left  the  Hall.  When  all  was  ready,  the  under- 
taker's assistants  took  the  coffin  on  their  shoulders,  the  pall 
being  cast  over  it,  and  the  pall-bearers  then  assumed  their 
places,  five  on  each  side,  the  pairs  being,  in  order,  Mr. 
George  Armitstead  and  Lord  Eendel,  the  Earl  of  Rosebery 
and  the  Duke  of  Rutland,  Sir  William  Harcourt  and  Mr. 
A.  W.  Balfour,  the  Earl  of  Kimberley  and  Lord  Salisbury, 
The  Duke  of  York  and  the  Prince  of  Wales.  Before  the 
start,  the  Bishop  of  London,  standing  at  the  head  of  the 
coffin,  in  ringing  tones  offered  the  prayer  : 

"Almighty  God,  with  Whom  live  the  spirits  of  just  men 
made  perfect,  we  give  Thee  hearty  thanks  for  the  life  and 
example  of  Thy  servant,  William  Ewart  Gladstone,  wrhom 
Thou  hast  been  pleased  to  call  from  the  trials  and  troubles 
of  this  world  to  the  realm  of  eternal  rest;  and  we  beseech 
Thee  to  grant  us  Thy  grace  that,  as  we  commit  his  body  to 
the  ground,  our  hearts  and  minds  may  be  so  moved  by  the 
remembrance  of  his  life  and  manifold  labors  for  the  service 
of  mankind,  his  country,  and  his  Queen,  begun,  continued, 
and  ended  in  Thy  faith  and  fear,  that  we  fail  not  to  learn 
the  lessons  that  Thou  teachest  Thy  faihful  people,  by 
the  lives  of  those  who  live  and  serve  Thee,  through  Jesus 
Christ,  our  only  Lord  and  Savior. 

A  loud  heartfelt  "Amen"  was  said  by  the  whole  company. 
In  the  procession  the  members  of  the  last  Liberal  Govern- 
ment walked  together,  followed  by  the  representatives  of 
the  various  members  of  the  Royal  Family,  and  these  by 
representatives  of  the  Tsar,  the  Kings  of  Italy,  Denmark, 
Norway  and  Sweeden,  the  King  of  the  Belgians  and  the 
Queen  of  the  Netherlands.  Prince  Christian  and  the  Dukes 
of  Cambridge  and  Connaught  were  present  in  person,  and 


420  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

the  Queen  was  represented  by  the  Earl  of  Pembroke.  Mr. 
Gladstone's  private  secretaries  during  his  last  administra- 
tion, Drs.  Habershon,  Doble  and  Biss,  and  his  valet,  butler 
and  coachman,  preceded  the  Hawarden  villagers. 

Out  of  the  gloom  of  the  Hall  into  the  light  of  the  square, 
the  coffin  was  borne,  and  was  there  placed  upon  a  raised 
platform,  covered  with  black  cloth,  fixed  upon  the  wheels 
of  an  ordinary  carriage.  The  square  was  filled  with  a  vast 
crowd,  and  every  window  was  occupied;  but  there  was  a 
strange  silence,  broken  only  by  the  booming  of  the  bell  of 
St.  Margaret's.  A  few  minutes  sufficed  for  the  procession 
and  the  coffin  to  cross  the  square  and  enter  the  Abbey. 
There  the  musical  part  of  the  service  had  already  commenced. 
Four  trombone  players,  perched  in  a  chantry  at  the  east  end 
of  the  Abbey,  played  Beethoven's  solemn  "Equale,"  which 
was  performed  at  his  own  funeral,  with  thrilling  effect. 
Then  Schubert's  "Heroic  March"  and  Beethoven's  well- 
known  funeral  march  from  a  piano  sonata  were  played  by 
organ,  brass  instruments  and  drums;  and  as  there  was  still 
a  brief  interval  before  the  arrival  of  the  procession,  Schu- 
bert's "Solemn  March  "  was  played.  The  choir  was  strongly 
reinforced  from  St.  Paul's  and  the  Chapels  Royal.  The 
burial  "sentences"  from  scripture  were  chanted  to  Croft's 
music  as  the  procession  entered  and  was  joined  by  the  clergy. 
The  coffin  was  carried  first  to  the  choir,  whither  Mrs.  Glad- 
stone had  been  led  by  her  nephew,  Colonel  Neville  Lyttel- 
ton.  The  other  members  of  the  family  were  also  grouped 
here. 

Behind  the  choir,  in  the  Dean's  pew,  were  the  Princess  of 
Wales  and  the  Duchess  of  York,  in  deep  mourning. 

As  the  coffin  entered  the  choir,  Sir  John  Bridge  played 
Beethoven's  march  from  the  Heroic  Symphony.  Psalm  xl. 
was  sung  by  the  choir  to  Purcell's  music,  and  the  fragile- 
looking  Dean,  in  a  voice  more  tremulous  than  usual,  read 
the  '  Resurrection  Chapter '  from  1  Corinthians.  '  Rock  of 


THE  NATION'S  TRIBUTE.  421 

Ages,'  the  favorite  of  all  Mr.  Gladstone's  favorite  hymns, 
was  sung  by  everybody  to  '  Redhead, '  and  as  the  body  was 
carried  towards  the  grave,  Newman's  hymn,  henceforward 
inseparably  linked  with  Mr.  Gladstone's  name,  '  Praise  to 
the  Holiest  in  the  Highest, '  was  sung  to  '  Gerontius. '  Over 
and  around  the  grave  a  dais  was  erected,  on  which  the  chief 
mourners  took  their  places.  At  the  foot  of  the  grave  a 
chair  was  placed  for  Mrs.  Gladstone,  but  the  venerable  lady, 
with  her  daughters  and  the  children,  continued  during  the 
remainder  of  the  service  kneeling  or  standing.  Dean  Brad- 
ley repeated  the  customary  sentences,  while  the  coffin  was 
lowered  to  its  last  resting-place,  and  the  aged  Clerk  of  the 
works  dropped  upon  it  earth  from  the  Garden  of  Gethsem- 
ane,  the  gift  of  an  anonymous  friend.  There  was  a  curious 
'proclamation  of  titles'  by  Norroy  King  of  Arms: 

' '  Thus,  it  hath  pleased  Almighty  God  to  take  out  of  this 
transitory  life,  unto  His  Divine  mercy,  the  late  Right  Hon- 
orable William  Ewart  Gladstone,  one  of  Her  Majesty's 
Most  Honorable  Privy  Council,  sometime  First  Lord  Com- 
missioner of  the  Treasury,  Lord  Privy  Seal,  Chancellor  and 
Under  Treasurer  of  the  Exchequer,  Her  Majesty's  Princi- 
pal Secretary  of  State  for  the  Colonies,  President  of  the 
Board  of  Trade,  Lord  High  Commissioner  Extraordinary  to 
the  Ionian  Islands. " 

Then  Watts's  hymn,  'O  God,  our  help  in  ages  past,'  was 
sung  to  'St.  Ann's,'  after  grace  pronounced  by  the  Dean, 
and  Handel's  chorus,  'Their  bodies  are  buried  in  peace,' 
was  sung  by  the  choir.  Sir  John  Stainer's  'Sevenfold 
Amen  '  brought  the  service  to  a  close. 

Mrs.  Gladstone,  with  her  children  and  grandchildren, 
were  standing  gazing  wistfully  into  the  grave.  Then  Mrs. 
Gladstone  sat  in  the  chair  placed  for  her,  and  made  it 
known  through  Mr.  Herbert  Gladstone  that  she  would 
like  to  shake  hands  with  the  pall-bearers.  The  Prince  of 
Wales,  Lords  Salisbury  and  Rosebery,  Sir  Wm.  Har- 


422  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 

court  and  Mr.  Balfour,  and  other  gentlemen,  most  with 
tears  in  their  eyes,  were  introduced,  and  with  old-fashioned 
courtliness  kissed  her  hand,  some  kneeling  on  one  knee. 
As  the  mourners  left  the  Abbey,  the  Dead  March  in  Saul 
was  played,  followed  by  a  repetition  of  the  Beethoven 
march  from  the  sonata.  Many  representative  Free  Church- 
men were  present,  including  Dr.  Rogers,  Dr.  Clifford,  Dr. 
Parker,  Rev.  Hugh  Price  Hughes,  Dr.  Gibson,  Rev.  A. 
Rowland,  Rev.  S.  Vincent,  Rev.  "W.  L.  Watkinson,  Rev. 
Thomas  Law,  Dr.  Newman  Hall,  Dr.  John  Roberts,  Dr. 
Martineau,  Rev.  John  Innocent,  Dr.  Swallow,  Rev.  James 
Jackson,  Rev.  H.  M.  Mackenzie,  and  Mr.  Isaac  Sharp. 

On  Saturday  the  Queen  telegraphed  to  Mrs.  Gladstone 
the  following  message: 

My  thoughts  are  much  with  you  today  when  your  dear 
husband  is  laid  to  rest.  Today's  ceremony  will  be  most 
trying  and  painful  for  you,  but  it  will  be,  at  the  same  time, 
gratifying  to  you  to  see  the  respect  and  regret  evinced  by 
the  nation  for  the  memory  of  one  whose  character  and  in- 
tellectual abilities,  marked  him  as  one  of  the  most  distin- 
guished statesmen  of  my  reign.  I  •  shall  ever  gratefully 
remember  his  devotion  and  zeal  in  all  that  concerned  my 
personal  welfare  and  that  of  my  family. 

VICTORIA  R.  I. 


SUNDAY   MORNING.  MAY  22,  IN  HAWARDEN  CHURCH:   MRS.   GLADSTONE 
LISTENING  TO  THE  SERMON  OF   DEAN  WICKHAM. 


THE  NATION'S   TRIBUTE.  4-%23 


IN  MEMORIAM: 


WILLIAM  EWART  GLADSTONE. 


A 


Y,  them  hast  gained  the  end 

Of  long-  and  glorious  strife, 
Consoled  by  love  and  friends, 

Thrice  blessed  life ! 
If  all  the  immortal  die, 

What  gain  hath  life  to  give  ? 
If  all  the  immortal  live, 

Death  brings  no  sigh  ! 

Oh,  long  life  lit  with  praise 

For  duty  nobly  done, 
High  aims,  laborious  days, 

And  the  crown  won  ! 
Why  should  we  mourn  and  weep 

That  thou  dost  toil  no  more  ? 
At  length  God  gives  thee  sleep, 

Thy  labors  o'er  ! 

The  crying  of  the  weak 

Called  not  to  thee  in  vain. 
Thy  swift  tongue  burned  to  speak 

Relief  to  pain. 
The  lightning  of  thy  scorn 

No  wrong  might  long  defy. 
Thy  truth  for  lives  forlorn — 

Thy  piercing  eye ! 

Good  knight !  No  soil  of  wrong 

Thy  spotless  shield  might  stain  ; 
Thy  keen  sword  served  thee  long, 

And  not  in  vain. 
Oh,  high  impetuous  soul, 

That,  mounting  to  the  light, 
Spurnedst  the  dull  world's  control 

To  gain  the  right ! 


4:24:  LIFE    OF    GLADSTONE. 


'Mid  strife  the  century  dies — 

Massacre,  famine,  war. 
The  noise  of  groans  and  sighs 

Is  borne  afar; 
The  monstrous  cannon  roar, 

The  earth,  the  air,  the  torn, 
'Mid  thunderings  eveimore 

Time's  dawns  are  born. 

But  thou  no  more  art  here, 

But  watchest  far  away, 
Calm  in  some  peaceful  sphere, 

The  eternal  day. 
Oh,  thou  who  long  didst  guide 

Our  Britain's  loyal  will, 
Invisible  at  her  side 

Aid  thou  her  still ! 

Oh,  aged  life  and  blest, 

Wearing  thy  duteous  years, 
Entered  thou  on  thy  rest ; 

We  shed  not  tears  ! 
Thou  hast  thy  labors  to  thy  country  given. 

Thy  eloquent  tongue,  thy  keen  untiring  brain, 
Thy  changeless  love  of  man,  thy  trust  in  Heaven, 
Thy  crown  of  pain. 

Lewis  Morrison,  in  London  Times. 


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